


Soft Place to Fall

by ponderinfrustration



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, F/M, Mail Order Brides, References to Alcohol & Gambling & Prostitution, Romance, Shooting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2019-11-14 11:10:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 50,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18051395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderinfrustration/pseuds/ponderinfrustration
Summary: In the summer of 1884, Christine Daaé leaves New Orleans for Wyoming to marry Erik, a man she knows only through letters. Together they must navigate the waters of a relationship with a stranger, while the town of Contention lives up to its troubled name.





	1. Portraiture

The whole venture is Sorelli’s idea and, if it should go badly, there is some comfort in being able to lay the blame with her. The experience of last time is proof enough of that, and as long as Christine lives she will forever be thankful that when she went to Leadville she had enough money to get back to New Orleans and Sorelli.

But it’s the possibilities of this time that set her on her edge, that make anxiety coil deep in her gut.

She might have nothing to worry about. He – Marshal Erik Lamonte, of Contention, Wyoming (“somewhere north of Cheyenne”) might not like her picture. Surely a town’s marshal could find someone better than her.

And if he does like her picture, if – dare she think it, and she dare not fully give the thought form because it makes her stomach churn – if he does like it, and things move on _to the next stage_ , then it can only go better than it did last time, right?

A girl can hardly be so unlucky twice.

(If anyone can be, it will be her.)

Sorelli, in her infinite skills, is making it her business to ensure that Christine will _not_ be so unlucky twice. Her fingers are nimble and delicate as they straighten Christine’s curly waves and weave them into a delicate chignon, fighting to keep them in line. It was her suggestion that it be a new portrait taken to send on to him, and she forbade Christine from using the old one. Perhaps, if it had not been a Marshal, or not one who writes so precisely and whose letters sound so unfailingly polite, the old one would be finding itself slipped into an envelope again, wrapped safe in a letter, and they would be spared this trouble.

But of course they are not spared this trouble. Trouble is exactly what they are going to.

If only it had been _Sorelli_ the Marshal had taken a shine to, Sorelli whose description he had decided to write to. _Twenty-three_ (twenty-six), _excellent cook_ (makes a good soup but everything else is only passable), _skilled housekeeper_ (well, skilled at sewing. Her dusting leaves a little to desire), _healthy_ (there was that concern over a sore, but everything is fine now and there was no need for mercury treatments), _upstanding_ (leaving aside Dodge in seventy-eight), _willing to host parties and will attend to all of a prospective husband’s needs_ (all of them, even the ones he didn’t realise he needed, multiple times a night if required), _slim, dark hair, brown eyes_ (and she left out the less-than-white complexion that goes with it, legacy of a grandmother, she thinks).

Christine supposes she should be flattered, that the Marshal had to read Sorelli’s description (and the others preceding it in the pamphlet) before her own caught his eye. _Twenty_ (on the button), _cooks, bakes, sews_ (all of them up to a point, though the sewing is her best thanks to years of experience), _plays piano_ (badly, and very out of practice, she hasn’t had a lesson in probably five years, and she and Sorelli had debated over including it until Sorelli declared, “They won’t be able to tell the difference anyway!”), _good with children_ (well, she’s liked any child she’s ever come across, not that there’s been many), _healthy_ (apart from the episode of bronchitis that almost cost her her chorus job while the theatre was still going), _petite, blonde, blue eyes_ (she considered saying Swedish and then worried anyone might decide she’s really a German, or assume she knows anything about cows which she very definitely does not. Best to keep it all as neutral as possible).

Was it the _good with children_ that drew him in? Maybe he has several that he expects her to be a mother to. Maybe he’s widowed! And he’ll spend forever comparing all her flaws to the forever-perfect wife that was! And she’ll be locked in a loveless marriage with a man who only wants her around because she’s a woman but he’ll always resent her as a replacement!

The thoughts whirl too fast for to grasp at.

_Children widowed dead wife children widowed dead wife children widowed dead_

They won’t slow down why won’t they slow down?

Sorelli’s voice, soft, telling her to breathe, her brown eyes creased with worry before her but she can’t breathe she can’t breathe she can’t breathe her heart is pounding too fast oh God he’ll hate her he’ll hate her he’ll take one look at her and leave her and she’ll end up working the cribs and backstreets after all.

The pale blue cotton of her skirt is oddly vivid. Hand on the back of her head forcing her down, oh that’s why she’s looking at her knees, that’s why she can see her skirt, she never used to panic like this going on stage.

Something pinches her nose and she gasps, air cold in her mouth, and Sorelli’s voice is low in her ear. “Breathe, Christine, just breathe. Slowly. Listen to me, listen. In, yes good, hold it a second, hold it, and out. That’s it, come on you’re all right, in, we’ll dry your tears and paint your face, get a bit of colour back in your cheeks, and out, that’s good and no one will ever know the difference, now in…”

* * *

 

It is oddly comforting being able to blame Aman for the situation Erik finds himself in. It was, after all Aman’s suggestion (aided and abetted by both De Chagny’s, true, and they must know by now that he finds it impossible to say no to Philippe after everything, that must be why they badgered him so) that he find himself a wife. He might almost be angry over getting pushed into the whole thing, if he had not begun to wonder over it himself.

If the whole thing goes horribly wrong, he need not feel terrible about it in his own right.

Aman purses his lips at the sight of his suit as he turns around. “The double-breasted would do better.” It is the politest way he has of saying, _you look like death warmed up_ and Erik sighs. The double-breasted is far from the best suit he has. It is certainly not his favoured one and if he has to go through this whole ordeal he will wear a suit he _likes_ dammit.

“Which mask should I choose? The white or the black?” He will not dignify the suit remark with a reply. And in truth, the white mask would be his own first choice, it brings out his features very admirably, but Aman will be peevish if he can’t have some input.

“The black. If you insist on looking as if you’ve just escaped from your own funeral, it goes better with the suit.”

He holds both to his face as he turns back to the mirror, and sighs. Aman probably does have a point, even if he is being dramatic about it and only saying it to be difficult. “Why do I have to send my own portrait anyway? De Chagny Junior photographs so much better. He wouldn’t even notice one missing!” On consideration of his reflection, he will concede that the black mask is more suitable on this occasion, and he regretfully sets the white aside, but really, there is no need for Aman to roll his eyes.

“Because that worked so well with that Carlotta woman.”

He may be Erik Lamonte, town’s marshal, former cavalry Major, still (probably) wanted in both Kansas and California for unrelated unfortunate incidents, but that tangle with Carlotta Giudicelli, well, there must be better men than he that she has left a mark on.

He was lucky to get away with only two gashes.

“If you hadn’t insisted on this whole affair, perhaps it would never have happened,” he mutters as he turns away from the mirror, mask secured in place, but clearly Aman has better hearing than he gives him credit for because his face is, if possible, even more pinched than it was a moment ago.

If it were possible to take back words, to erase them from existence and the record of them ever having been spoken, he would take back those ones, if only to spare himself from having to hear what will likely come next.

“Do you want to win this election?” Aman’s voice is quiet, dangerously so, and Erik bites his tongue to keep himself in check. He is so very much not in the mood for one of these arguments.

“Of course I do.” _I owe it to Philippe, if nothing else._ “But if this doesn’t work—”

“It will work.” Aman smiles, his rant burned off but surely it will come again when Erik least expects it. “They know you, they know what you’re capable of, and with a wife to boost your image I don’t know what Woods could hope to do.”

“And if this one says no, with my own portrait?” It’s a realer possibility than he wants to admit. He knows too well that some of the town’s people are still revolted by him and the very fact that he needs to wear a mask, and they’ve never had to confront the possibility of seeing him exposed.

“Then we’ll make a trip to Cheyenne, and you can find a nice woman to have a whirlwind romance with and marry her on the quiet. Like a dime novel.” Damn Aman but he really does have an answer for everything.

“Maybe.” _They’ll hardly be as pretty as she is_ , the thought comes unbidden and he swallows, his mouth suddenly dry and he fixes his cuffs, anything to keep his hands busy and his face as inscrutable as possible. He’s studied the portrait of the girl (Christine Daaé, twenty years old, in New Orleans, and he’s often felt old but he’s old enough to be her father for crying out loud, he shouldn’t be thinking that she’s pretty, he should just find some nice widow woman somewhere, but the thought of constantly being compared to a dead man, and a widow would have expectations of him that maybe (hopefully) a twenty year old girl won’t have. She’d be an ideal wife for De Chagny Junior for Christ’s sake!) and the odd thing is he _wants_ her to like him, he really does. He’s never wanted someone to like him more in his life!

“What are you going to tell her about…” Aman makes a vague gesture but really there’s no need to elaborate on what he means. It’s obvious enough.

“The war.” It’s a reasonable enough explanation for a mask covering half his face. “Or possibly a scattergun accident. I haven’t decided yet.” Either explanation is as good as the other in the grand scheme of things. It’s not as if she’ll want much to do with him when she realises he’s disfigured. “Join me in the portrait.” It’s a skill, making such a suggestion sound impulsive when he’s been thinking about it all day.

Aman cocks a brow, arms folded. “Why?”

“Moral support. Keep me from running out of the place. Trev can hold the fort without the two of us.” And he knows just how to sweeten the suggestion. “You can take tonight off.”

Aman’s brow goes, if possible, higher, and a smile twitches at the corner of his mouth. “I was taking tonight off anyway.”

“True, but this way I promise not to begrudge you.” He says it with just enough lightness that Aman’s face does crack with his smile, and he knows he’s won.


	2. Decisions

There should have been a reply by now. He knows it, knows it as surely as he knows that the sun will rise tomorrow and Canis Major has the brightest star in all the heavens and De Chagny Junior makes coffee that could strip paint or take grease off a saddle but Aman somehow knows how to make it palatable (Erik suspects a combination of chicory, sugar, and some obscure hitherto forgotten brand of witchcraft). And as much as he knows all of these things, he feels it in his bones that there should have been a reply by now.

It’s been nearly three weeks. Even Carlotta (dreadful woman) responded faster than this when she received Philippe’s portrait and assumed it to be his.

The waiting is driving him demented, gives his brain space to come up with any number of possible scenarios – she has accepted another suitor; the letter was lost in transit; something has happened to leave her incapacitated; she has decided to see him in person and even now is travelling here unbeknownst to him; the very sight of his mask sent her running.

_The mention of his disfigurement has repulsed her_.

On and on and on. Terrible possibility after horrible possibility after possible unthinkable reality, and nothing to alleviate any of them because there has been no letter, no word, nothing at all, as if she has dropped off the edge of the world (though of course the world is round, that’s just being fanciful) or disappeared into the wind like a ghost.

It was always said the streets of New Orleans are full of ghosts, that the spirits of drownings and accidents and incidents coalesce out of the bayous. Is it so unthinkable one might have written him?

That’s almost as fanciful as the edge of the world.

Dammit but he’s going to have to go to Cheyenne and find a nice widow woman, isn’t he?

He taps out a few bars on the piano but every note is jarring and discordant to his ear. He settles in to play poker but loses and loses and loses consistently and can’t think out the cards and the dealing. He paces his office until Trev looks up from a stack of paperwork and insists that he can’t concentrate “with that staccato rhythm of your boots” (the man has clearly been dipping into poetry again in his off-time). He locks up cowhands for the smallest infractions until the cells are full. He smokes and drinks and nips laudanum to help him sleep then wakes feeling a hundred times worse with a throbbing headache. He drinks coffee and doesn’t eat and forgets to shave the good half of his face, until Philippe’s lips pressed together tell him he looks a mess. He rides out the Khanum to keep her exercised and ready but she’s always been a high-strung mare and his restlessness makes her edgy. He takes Ayesha for light rides but is nervous about over-stressing her in her condition. He seriously contemplates heading for the Henderson ranch to see if they have any broncs for breaking. Getting tossed around like a rag doll until every muscle and sinew aches might be the cure for what ails him.

He closes his eyes tight and tries to breathe slowly through his nose. In, hold, and out. In, hold, and out. In, hold, and out.

His mood is not doing any good for public opinion, six months out from the election. And he only got this job in the first place because Philippe swore for him during the emergency. It’s easier for him to lose it than it ever would be for anyone else, and what then? Back to his old vagabond ways, drifting from town to town and always quietly (secretly) hoping that he might provoke someone into taking a shot at him? Damn but he’s tired of that life, was tired of it a long time ago, even before they came here, before Philippe recognised him and gave him a job. Out of _pity_.

(It wasn’t quite pity, he knows that. It was many tangled things. But pity is what it feels like.)

Oh, God. What if she marries him and it’s only out of pity? He doesn’t think he could stand it.

It’s too late for him to be awake, he knows that. But his thoughts just won’t stop and he can’t bang them out on the piano because Aman would wake and threaten to lock him out, and it’s more than his life is worth to annoy Aman at this hour of the night, no matter that they each own half of the house.

(Aman would tell him to be patient, has told him, in fact. Multiple times. In excruciating detail. Would tell him to calm down, these things take time, the girl probably needs time to consider his letter and come to a decision, but it’s easy for Aman to preach about patience. He’s not the one who has propositioned a stranger for marriage.)

Erik throws himself back on the bed, presses the heels of his hands into his eyes as if that might force the thoughts from his head, and tries to tell himself that maybe, just maybe, in the morning there will be word from New Orleans.

* * *

 

She is very close to accepting Marshal Lamonte’s offer of marriage. The letter that arrived with his portrait contained it, along with a host of details and ideas that, if she is being honest, are a hundred times more promising than the letter from Tom Robertson in Leadville that she _did_ accept before the whole thing went bad (before she arrived in Leadville only to discover Robertson had been killed mere hours earlier in a dispute over cards, the story relayed to her by a consumptive gentleman with a slow way of talking who was immensely well-spoken. She stayed just long enough to attend the funeral of the man who had, however briefly on paper, been her fiancé, and wasn’t she glad that she had enough for the fare back to New Orleans instead of having to stay alone in that terrible place?)

The Marshal has promised her her own private room in his house. He has promised her books and dresses. He has a piano that she may play at her leisure if she so wishes (though she has not told him that it is certainly three years since she played, if not more). He has promised to give her anything she might want, even a garden!, tells her that the only cleaning she might have to do would be light and he looks forward to her baking skills. She should say yes, she knows she should, this is the best offer she is ever likely to get.

But there’s a part of her that whispers, _say no_. _Start again. There will be other men_. It’s a small part, but it’s there nonetheless, whispering in the back of her mind, reminding her that she knows nothing of him really, of how he is as a man. He might be violent, he might be crude for all the politeness of his letters. He’s a Marshal. He’s in danger every day. He might put _her_ in danger, however accidentally. He says that he mostly seeks companionship, but he admits that his friend and Deputy, Aman Hariri, also shares his house so surely he must have enough companionship already. And his face! The half of his face that he wears a mask over! (The mask is black in the picture, covering the right half.) How badly might it be disfigured? It must be terribly, if he wears a mask, if he refuses to show it to the world. He says it came from a shotgun blast, so does that mean he has other scars, terrible scars? He can’t be infirm if he’s a Marshal, but surely there’s other damage? He might have a weaker constitution than other men. She might go out there and find herself widowed within the week!

And if his mouth is damaged, or that half of it at any rate, does that affect his ability to kiss? Surely it would feel strange, if not for him certainly for her and if it affects his ability to kiss what does that mean for—for—for the other things? The affairs between a man and a woman? Sorelli has explained to her, in detail, about it all, about how to enjoy it and how to make sure he enjoys it, and alternative strategies to ensure satisfaction outside of the usual way, but it sounds like an ordeal, to do such things with a man, and if he’s as badly damaged as all that then it might be even worse.

Then again, he didn’t mention other damage, so maybe that’s a good sign. And the undamaged half of his face is appealing, she will admit. High cheekbones and a strong jaw and piercing eyes even if it’s impossible to tell from the portrait what colour they are, only light.

He’s tall, too. Or at least, he looks tall in his dark suit, silver badge pinned to his chest, beside the other man in the picture, who is of a darker complexion, like Sorelli. The Marshal says that he is his friend Mister Hariri who shares his house, and Hariri is broader than the slim Marshal, doesn’t look so gaunt though he is a head shorter. He has a good face too and briefly she wonders if he might also be in the market for a wife, and then she dismisses the thought. What does it matter, if he is or not?

But if she accepts, and the Marshal is killed before she gets there? He might already have been killed, and she would be accepting the offer of a dead man, the very possibility of which makes her shiver even as she tries to dismiss it as far-fetched. It is not half as lawless out there as it was. All the papers say so.

If Sorelli says she should accept, she’ll accept.

The resolution makes her feel a little easier.

Which gives her an odd sense of comfort when Sorelli (after setting aside the salacious novel that has had her carefully maintaining a still face all morning) reads the letter and examines the photograph, then looks her in the eye with her stern dark gaze and says, “go for it.” The stern face breaks and her eyes twinkle with a grin.

“The man’s a marshal.” And Sorelli’s voice has taken on that old knowing tone. “Presumably he takes his spurs off and knows how to bathe. And I doubt if he wears his gun to bed. Though I’m sure you could request the badge.”

This last, delivered with a wink, makes Christine choke on her ill-judged mouthful of coffee. She splutters and coughs and Sorelli laughs that tinkling laugh that sets the world shining and then Christine is laughing too, laughing and coughing, the tears trickling down her cheeks.

“I’m sure…you…like that,” she gets out between gasps for air and Sorelli snorts.

“You forget I worked in Dodge.” Her lips are twitching, threatening to laugh again, as Christine tries not to think about the implications, about who, possibly, her best friend might have taken to bed.

She knows enough of Sorelli to know what it must have been like, and she fights another laugh bubbling up inside her, afraid if she lets it out she might become hysterical.

It’s going to really happen. She’s going to go to Wyoming. She’s going to marry a man with half a face who she’s never met. She’s going to leave Sorelli, again. For real this time.

And in a moment all the excitement, all the laughter, ebbs away. She’s going to really do it. She’s going to go.

She’d thought it might feel easier, after last time.

Sorelli’s arms come around her, pull her close and Christine leans into her, closes her eyes. “I’ll miss you,” she whispers, and Sorelli’s lips brush her hair.

“I know.”


	3. Preparations

She does not have many things – blouses and skirts mainly, a dark blue travelling suit, her night things, ribbons for her hair, her father’s old violin. Her sewing things. A couple of books. The letters from Marshal Lamonte, _perhaps you should get used to calling me Erik_ , and his portrait. What she has is distinctly simple and unfashionable, because what was the point of fashion when she was living in a single room with Sorelli? She had a couple of better dresses when the theatre was still active, but she sold them off one by one, and though she was not exactly living in what you’d call society, she did retain one nice light blue dress, her best dress, to serve as a wedding gown.

It is a little ridiculous, how nervous she is to wear it. She’d built herself up before going to Leadville but when she got there and discovered the man was dead, the dress seemed to mock her, still lying in her suitcase. Packing it now, again, her fingers trace over the smooth fabric, the delicate appliqué around the neckline, and she tries not to think that she might not get to wear it this time either. Just because it happened once does not mean it will happen again. She must stay positive. There is no reason to think Erik will be dead by the time she gets there.

She was never this nervous before going on stage, and not even as bad as this before Leadville. Maybe it’s true what they say about single women who have been out of the world too long, that it makes them start to go a little mad. Or maybe the touch of madness is why they were out of the world to begin with. But this anxiety can hardly be a sign of madness. She is simply being careful, and trying to foresee every possibility so she can be prepared to meet it head on.

At least, that’s what she tries to tell herself. Sorelli just tells her she’s overthinking.

Maighdlin Giry soon-to-be Barbazac comes to see her a few days before she is due to leave. “I hear you’re getting married,” she says, “and I came to wish you luck.” Such a simple sentiment that might be believable from anyone else, but Maighdlin is a notorious gossip and always has been, making up several stories that the theatre was haunted and actresses had died there. But no matter how Christine investigated each alleged incident, she could not find a shred of evidence of any of the claims. No secret tunnels, no hidden lair unless you count the one where Firmin and Moncharmin were caught in indecent acts (“I told you so!” Sorelli crowed) and that one was very nearly public knowledge anyway. Sorelli had been there multiple times. She herself had been there once, though there was no man involved. The boys in the ballet all certainly seemed to know about it. Perhaps they were the source of the odd noises that Meg insisted came from the ghost.

She shudders to think of what Meg would say about Erik and his half-face, so she shows her the portrait she still has of Tom Robertson from Leadville that she’s trying to decide whether to bring with her or leave behind, and tells her that he’s her husband-to-be, mayor of a town and shockingly wealthy. A slightly sour look comes over Meg and inside Christine is proudly victorious, though she keeps her face polite. Let that rumour travel through the old theatre circle. Serves them right being such vicious gossips.

Sorelli holds in her laughter until Meg leaves only minutes later, having obviously not found the salacious story of a wild cowhand with three kills to his name that she came looking for, and then she lets out a near hysterical giggle as Christine smiles to herself, quite pleased, and tucks the portrait into her suitcase. Poor unfortunate Tom might come in useful again someday. It is always best to be prepared.

“That was devious, darling,” Sorelli is still grinning when she turns back to her. “Like something I would do.”

And now, at last, Christine lets her smile become a grin. “Clearly I learned from the best.”

Suddenly, she doesn’t feel quite so bad that her worldly possessions amount to one battered suitcase, and an old violin.

* * *

The one good thing that came from the ill-fated proposition to that Carlotta woman was that it spurred him on to have an extension built onto the house, for any potential bride of his. He would not force a woman to share his room, no matter how amenable to the idea she may be, but nor could he (or would he) ask Aman to leave. So the extension, which Aman accepted with a roll of his eyes, was decided on and built with a little help from some cash he won in a very lucky poker game.

If he played a strong part in _dealing_ the poker game, well, some details do tend to be lost.

Ever since the letter came from Christine (and he has been training himself to think of her as Christine as opposed to Miss Daaé), agreeing to marry him, he has been furnishing the room. The bed had already been installed, but he makes a “business trip” to Cheyenne, leaving Aman in charge of the office in his absence, to buy quilts to dress it, and linen sheets, and pale blue curtains, and blue paint for the walls (he enlists Max and De Chagny Junior to do the actual painting, pleading paperwork, but their work is very admirable). It is imperative that Christine be as comfortable as possible as soon as she arrives. And buying these things in Cheyenne leaves him reasonably anonymous. It might save him from too many questions if she backs out when she sees him.

He buys a new bathtub, solely for her en suite, and has it shipped. It takes longer than he expects to wrestle it into the room, but with his eye for engineering as well as drafting in Trev with Aman as an extra set of hands, the feat is achieved in a reasonable time, and no harm done to anything.

When he was new in town, shortly after becoming Deputy to Philippe, he sat on the committee for running water, and he’s grateful for it now. The system is still not as widespread in the town as he would like, but they have water in their house and it saves him a great deal of trouble, and he adapts the same system he has for heating water in the bathroom he shares with Aman in order that Christine’s water will be warmed for her.

Christine will appreciate those efforts, he is sure.

He always keeps the piano tuned and in good repair, and so he collects more sheet music that she might like to play. But still, all he has done doesn’t feel like enough. Enough to make her comfortable, perhaps, but is it enough to keep her from getting bored? Surely women don’t truly sit around knitting all day? And there could never be that much dusting.

Books. She will have to have books.

But what do women even read? Hardly philosophical texts and lawbooks, though both De Chagny brothers have an ample collection of those.

He isn’t on good enough terms with any woman to be able to ask without sounding daft, except for Max’s Beth, and to his knowledge she isn’t much for reading. Though she is, by all accounts, an excellent dancer.

If his bride-to-be is something of a pianist, then she is unlikely to be a dancer. And he has never been one to appreciate those arts the way other men do.

He puts his cigar down, and sighs, looking around the table. Philippe is playing solitaire with a look of great seriousness, cigar perched carefully in his mouth and his bad arm in a pastel pink sling that brings out the salmon of his shirt. There’s something painful about his insistence on being fashionable even if he can’t do much of anything anymore, and Erik has to swallow against the tightness in his throat. Trev is beside him, cutting cards with almost the same intensity, though the glass of whisky at his elbow is slightly lower than it was a few minutes ago. And De Chagny Junior – Raoul, he must remember to call the boy Raoul – is asleep, wrapped up in his heavy coat, hat pulled down low over his eyes. It will soon be time for him to go on duty, but let him rest for now.

And so, Erik addresses the question to the table at large.

“What sort of thing might she—might Christine read?”

Trev, being the most literary one of the group, is the first to answer, though he doesn’t look up from his cards. Clearly trying to improve his lacklustre dealing skills. “Miss Austen, I suspect. Possibly the sisters Brontë. You might try some poetry on her. Or the Greeks and Romans.”

He’s always been partial to Virgil himself, Erik will admit, though he read it in the original Latin. Christine would likely favour it in English. He has an English copy of it somewhere, he thinks…

“Shakespeare is always good,” Philippe’s voice is little more than a murmur as he looks up. “Adelia says their foreman is very fond of him. Shakespeare and Marlowe both.” Erik is not quite sure of the value of the opinion of a foreman on a ranch in Texas, but if it comes with the accreditation of Philippe’s sister then perhaps it might be worth listening to. “I like the Russians myself, and so did a dentist I briefly knew in Dallas.”

Well, a Dallas dentist’s opinion is probably better than a foreman’s, depending on the dentist. He’s known a few in his time that have been questionable though there was that one man in Dodge who was decent. Pity there’s no pen and paper to hand. He should be making a list of all of these suggestions. “Any particular poetry?” Erik’s own knowledge mostly amounts to Byron and his ‘Don Juan’.

“Tennyson.” Raoul’s voice is hoarse as he straightens up. “And Marvell.” His smile is slightly bemused. “Worked a treat the last time I was in Cheyenne.”

Philippe stares at his younger brother. “You didn’t tell me that when you got back.” His tone is faintly accusatory, and Erik struggles to school his face impassive.

Raoul’s eyes flicker to Trev and then back, his lips twitching, and Erik fights to hold in a snort. “You were rather busy at the time.” He stands as Philippe glances away, his cheeks colouring. “I think I’ll go and relieve Aman.” He plucks one of the unlit cigars from the table and leaves without another word.

When the door closes with a click, Trev at last looks up from his cards, eyes dancing with amusement. “I think he’s the one who needs a wife.”

Erik, who was taking a sip of his whiskey at the time of the remark, loses the battle with his laughter and snorts it onto the table.


	4. Travel

She leaves New Orleans on a train after two kisses – one from Sorelli and the other to her, and her lips are tingling with the taste even as she fights the tears that try to water in her eyes. It is not a goodbye to her best friend, not truly. They will still have letters, will send each other portraits and lines of poetry like a code, but it will be different. It will be wrong. Sorelli has been the most important person in her life for three years, picked her up after her father died and found her work in the theatre and settled on this mad scheme to find husbands when the theatre fell through and took her back with open arms after her return from Leadville. Leaving her is almost like tearing out a part of herself.

She clings to the memory of their last laugh together, before she left their room, as the train trundles across the country. “Tell him to get his good looking friend to write me if he wants a wife.” Delivered with a saucy wink, and a new portrait of Sorelli herself slipped into the violin case. “Don’t go forgetting me now when you’re wrapped up in your husband.”

“How could I possibly?”

A low whisper in her ear. “You know how it is with men.” And a knowing glance that would have made the Christine of three years ago blush. “I have a parting gift for you.”

Two violets, and a book of poems from an ancient Greek. Then the kiss, light and quick to her lips. “Remember what I taught you.”

Christine’s own kiss in return was firmer, lingered a little longer, as if she might try to tell her with it what she cannot put into words, not even to herself. “The memories are quite vivid.”

And then they laughed, and hugged, and parted with the promise that Christine would wire her as soon as she arrived in Contention, and several times along the way. And the memories keep Christine warm as she changes from one train to another, bound for Cheyenne.

* * *

 

“But what do women _do_ with their time?” Christine will be here in three days, and he has shelves stocked with books for her but surely she won’t sit around and read all day. He and Aman keep a very tidy house already, and both of them are adept cooks. It’s not as if she’s going to have much work, and the question is more pressing now than ever.

What the hell is Christine going to do? Is she going to expect him to entertain her all day? That’s an impossible ask! And he will not have her getting bored.

It’s a quiet evening in the town, and Trev looks up from cleaning his rifle, not that the rifle needs much cleaning because he cleans it once a week religiously and barely touches it in between. “You’re asking the wrong man. I’ve no intention of finding a wife.”

“Yes, thank you for your enlightening remarks, Trevelyan.” If his words are a little sharper than usual, Erik can’t bring himself to care. He is well aware of Trev’s proclivities and they are only a hindrance when he needs concrete answers. She’ll be here in three days!

Aman sighs, not looking up from his stack of paperwork. “You have a standing invitation to the Cattleman’s Ball in July. Getting a dress made will surely entertain her while she settles in. Tell her to get a whole new wardrobe!”

“How much would a wardrobe of dresses cost?” He’s already running close to budget on the books and furnishings. It’s a reasonable concern. Though there is that high-stakes game tomorrow night…

“No idea. But,” and Aman’s look is pointed, “if you run out of options, you could entertain her the way most husbands do.” A raised eyebrow clarifies his meaning, not that it needed much clarification, and Erik fights the wave of nausea that comes over him.

 _The way most husbands do._ He has a good idea of what that way is, and the mess of it all does not bear thinking about.

* * *

She spends one night in Cheyenne, in a boarding house run by an old woman, Mrs Londra, who fusses over her and makes sure she eats her fill at supper. Mrs Londra supplies her with a bath and a comfortable bed, but tired though she is, Christine cannot sleep. Her thoughts keep whirling, jumping over the train journey, over Sorelli in New Orleans, over the route to the stage station and busy-ness of the city and the dust and the landscape which is not so bleak as she expected it might be nor so green as she would like, but her thoughts keep coming back to tomorrow. To tomorrow, when she will spend twelve hours in a stagecoach so she can reach the town that contains the man who will be her husband. Tomorrow night she will sleep beneath his roof, in the house where she is to spend an untold number of years, unless things don’t work out or they move on to another town or he dies. It’s a frightening thought, and keeps her awake through the night.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow…

She dozes, and dreams that she is still awake, still worrying over whether or not Erik will like her in person, or if he’ll try to send her back, change his mind about everything. Dreams she is in the new strange house that is to be hers, and it’s black as night underground, the walls closing in, closing in, squeezing all of the air out of the room, out of her.

Mrs Londra wakes her shortly after five, tries to persuade her to eat but she’s not hungry and feels as if she hasn’t slept at all, so she only takes a cup of coffee. Then it’s off to the stage station, through the streets that are already almost fully light, in the watery vague quality of early morning when the world is half-intangible and it feels like dreaming awake.

She is not quite sure that she is awake. How can she know she didn’t dream Mrs Londra waking her and is still sleeping back in the boarding house and going to miss the stage? Erik will think she’s changed her mind!

For one horrible moment the panic flares inside of her, blocking the early morning bustle of people heading to work and heading home and heading wherever they go in the early morning. She might be dreaming. How does she know she isn’t dreaming?

Someone bumps into her, almost knocks the violin case from her hand but she steadies her grip just in time and the world comes back into sharp focus. The city, false fronts and real around her, the dust, the _horses_ , and the warm hot smell of them trotting up and down the street. Of course she’s not dreaming. Of course it’s real.

She breathes in deeply, and exhales slowly, like Sorelli taught her, and with renewed purpose walks on again, to the stage office in the distance.

She will not be able to sleep in the coach. She knows that from before, from the journey to Leadville. Sleep is simply impossible with all of that bouncing and jolting. But at least on the stage she will be getting somewhere, however crowded it is, however uncomfortable.

She presents her ticket at the station, one-way to Contention, pre-paid by Erik with a handwritten note, and prays that it’s good enough, and then when it’s accepted and her suitcase and violin case are stowed safely on top, she sends a quick prayer that she will not need the return ticket, and climbs in.

There is a man already seated inside, in a black suit, his hat pulled down low over his eyes though he tips it to her as she settles across from him and arranges herself in a way that (she hopes) will be comfortable for the day’s journey.

Twelve hours even sounds interminable.

The coach fills up: a gentleman with a little boy of maybe eight or nine; a pretty black woman who smiles at her; an old woman, her face hidden with a mourning veil and a set of beads in her hands like the Catholics have in New Orleans; a dusty sunburned man with stubbled cheeks and torn clothes who smiles at them all and says in a cheery voice, “my horse was shot out from under me”; and another young man in a grey suit, his pale cheeks hollow as he sits across from the dusty one and they exchange grins.

And then they are off, the city flashing by, packed coach jolting and rattling. The mourning woman keeps up a steady whisper, fingers moving on her beads, and the black woman manages to sleep, her head resting on the shoulder of her black-suited neighbour whose long, elegant fingers toy constantly with his watch, make it play a tune and Christine catches sight of a woman in a portrait inside. The cowhand who proclaimed about his shot horse (and Christine shudders inwardly at the thought) falls into conversation with the man across from him who seems to be a consumptive if his hacking cough is anything to go by (and Christine is secretly relieved to be on the far side of the coach from him), a conversation that seems to mostly consist of nods and knowing glances and the occasional smile, as if they are in on a secret all of their own, though the cowhand does magic tricks for the little boy and tells him about galloping across the prairie after herds of cattle and surviving stampedes and breaking a nasty strawberry roan, while the consumptive gives the boy sweets from his pocket and the boy’s father smiles at them.

Christine wishes she could read, but her book is in her suitcase and Sorelli warned her before that if she tried to read on a stage she’d make herself sick. So she settles for looking out across the land, the long dry grass that sways with the wind and the clustered black dots in the distance that might be horses or cattle or some of the buffalo that she’s heard are still out her somewhere. A distant ridge of grey mountains, that doesn’t change all day, not at the first change of horses when she gets out ad stretches her legs, and not at the second when they all have coffee and a thin soup that tastes better than anything she’s ever tasted though she’s hesitant to ask what’s in it. The sun is high in the sky, the only clouds little white flurries, soft as wool, and the heat in the coach is oppressive. She’s grateful for her seat at the window, and the air on her face which is warm but cooler than the air inside.

Then they are on the final stretch of the journey, and there is the shape of a town in the far distance, a cluster of darkness that doesn’t seem to be getting closer. Somewhere there is her destination, is her future as a wife, is Erik. What must his house be like? Is it in good order or does it need a lot of work? Leadville was a mining town, full of houses that were built in a rush where tents once stood and the air was rank with fumes and grit from the mines. She did not have to stay in one of the houses there, slept in the hotel instead, but Sorelli has told her that houses out here have leaky roofs and no running water and the wind comes whistling through the timber like a thousand howling ghosts. But Erik’s a marshal, and he has promised her running water, so he must have one of the better houses.

And the water. Is the water good, or is it vile with alkali? Are there many children? Do the cattle come right into the street? Do cowhands like this one she’s sharing the coach with really gallop down the streets at night shooting at the moon and ride their horses into saloons and bordellos? Are there many other ladies? Or is the town full of fallen women like Sorelli once was, like she could have been?

She’s woken from her reverie by the coach coming to a sharp stop, and she lurches forward, almost bumps her head against the man across from her. Outside there are loud voices, “whoa!”s and “hey!”s and she collects herself to peek out the window, the  black women craning her neck beside her even as the widow (she must be a widow) prays harder. There are two men on dark horses, both of them wearing badges (though neither has a mask, that she can see) and both are covered in dust.

The closer one, with a thin moustache that might be blond, opens his mouth, but before he gets any words out, there’s an outraged cry from on top of the coach, and a voice in a strange accent.

“You left him alone!”

“No!” The cry comes from both riders, and the closer one turns around, shushes the man behind him, before turning back to someone on top of the coach. “Of course not! Trev is with him. What do you take us for, Aman!”

Aman? The name rings a bell, and it takes Christine a moment to realise why. That was the name of Erik’s friend, the one in the portrait, the one he shares his house with. It must be him! How many Amans do you meet every day? He’s not the driver, she knows that much. The driver was tanned but not dark enough to match the portrait, so it must be the man sitting up beside him, with the shotgun across his knees and the cloth around his face for the dust.

Her heart thumps harder, and she listens back into the voices.

Someone –  Aman on the coach, by the accent – is asking, “why did you come out here then?”

“There was word the stage would be hit close to town.” The second man answers this time, riding up closer. “He thought an escort would be a good idea.”

Who’s he? Erik? It must be, and a frisson runs through her.

“You know how impossible he is to argue with.” The first man again, and there is an incomprehensible murmur from the roof, before the stage takes off again. One of the riders falls in beside the driver and the other falls back behind them, and like that the excitement is over.

She might doze, now, but they are too close to town. Another couple of hours and she will be there, and she is restless with sudden energy, would run if she could but she can’t and she’s too cramped to move so she jiggles her leg and twists her handkerchief and checks her watch again and again and tries to remember what Sorelli said about breathing. Slow, deep breaths. In, and out.

The pretty black woman, who is a little reminiscent of Sorelli, really, only darker, pats her arm and smiles a bright smile at her.

“So what brings you to town?” she asks. “I hope it’s something good.”

“I’m getting married,” she answers, and the girl’s smile broadens.

“Congratulations!”

And almost before she knows, between telling the girl about Erik her husband-to-be and how she was widowed last year (only almost a lie), and the girl telling her about how she is going to work as a cook on one of the ranches, they’re passing between buildings, the coach slowing to a crawl, and then it stops. Her heart pounds as the door opens, and a hand reaches in. She takes it delicately, and as she’s helped out she realises it belongs to the blond deputy that rode alongside them. Up close, he’s younger than she thought, maybe only a little older than she is. She smiles up into twinkling blue eyes, and he smiles back before turning and she turns with him.

Then she sees him, in a dark suit, taller than she expected, a badge pinned to his chest, left arm in a sling, mask covering half his face, and her breath catches in her throat, her head spinning.

Erik.


	5. Impressions

He is aware of voices, aware of someone squeezing his arm, aware of people milling around him, pressing close. But all he can see is her, the girl who De Chagny Junior has helped out of the stage, who is rumpled after twelve hours of travel, her midnight-blue travelling dress highlighting just how pale she is, how petite, as slender and delicate as a twig.

Miss Christine Daaé, here, before him in the flesh.

His fiancée.

All at once it hits him like a kick to the chest. This is _her_ , here, real. This is who it has all been for, the portrait, the letters, the bedroom he’s designed and shelves he’s filled with books and the discreet chat he had with the widow woman Valerius who does dressmaking and who Max’s girl Beth introduced him to. This is the girl who has agreed to marry him, even knowing he is disfigured.

Tears prickle at the backs of his eyes, and he blinks them away. He will not cry before her, he will now. She does not need to know how desperate he is. None of them need to know.

Aman’s voice breaks through the haze, and Erik remembers belatedly that he’d sent him to Cheyenne to guard the stage she would come in on, after making up a story about the threat of robbery, the same story he fed Max and Raoul so they would escort the stage the last part of the way. He felt safer, knowing they were there.

He still feels safer.

“What did you do to your arm?”

Aman’s words make him feel the prickle afresh where the drunk’s knife tore his arm open, but before he can answer Miss Daaé – _Christine_ , he absolutely must remember to call her Christine – Christine’s eyes meet his, blue bonnet blue and shining, and she smiles, ever so slightly and his heart kicks again. It’s a fight to not gasp, to keep his jaw set and breathe steadily through his nose even if his breaths do stutter.

“…broke up a brawl. Armstrong said the stitches…” Trev’s voice, saving him from speaking and making a fool of himself, and as Christine comes closer, Raoul still hovering behind her, he feels his lips twitch into a slight smile. She really is beautiful, prettier even than her picture suggested.

He is suddenly, keenly, aware of how he must look to her – gaunt and bloodstained, shirt torn, unsteady on his feet because his head has started spinning and he doesn’t know why. Trev’s fingers squeeze his arm tighter, a silent support, and if he leans into the pressure a little more than is regular who is to say? Who would even notice?

Damn but he should have changed his shirt, should have gone to the trouble of making himself more presentable to a lady, and he would have if Armstrong had not taken so long stitching him. The man seems to get more precise every day!

She’s close enough to touch now, so close he can see the shifting of those blue eyes as she looks up into his face. His throat is painfully tight and he swallows hard to clear it, breath hitching as he stretches out his good hand to her, fingers trembling clear for all to see, if there is anyone watching through the chatter and bustle, and distantly, incongruously, he thinks, _at least I washed the blood off_.

At least he spared her the sight of that.

Her hand is gloved, and in a moment it is in his, soft and warm, so delicate her blue-wrapped fingers are almost swallowed up in his and his heart lurches again, legs weak as if they might buckle beneath him and wouldn’t that be undignified? A wonderful way to make a first impression? A laugh bubbles up within him, sudden and strangling (why does he feel this way? he’s not supposed to feel this way! is he ill? was the knife poisoned? she’ll think him mad, she must do already!) and swallowing hard against it he bows his head and brushes his lips to the back of her hand. Her glove is satin beneath his lips and he can’t help it, he kisses her fingertips as he straightens up, but doesn’t let go of her hand.

“Miss Daaé,” he whispers, voice hoarse, forgetting himself and his own vow to call her Christine but the name refuses to roll off his tongue.

“Marshal Lamonte.” She smiles again, tilting her head, eyes shining. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” The lilt to her words, unplaceable, is entirely unexpected and entirely welcome.

“The pleasure is all mine.” And it is. It _is_.

* * *

 

He walks her to the Western Union office, because she wants to wire a friend back in New Orleans, and he wants to pay for it for her, to save her from using her own money, but it is not his place to do it, not yet. Not until tomorrow, when they will stand before Judge Brown and he will declare them man and wife.

The telegrapher stares at them as Christine writes out her message and Erik can’t really blame him. He must look a sight, battered and torn, arm in a sling and a strange girl on the other one. Within the hour it will surely be all over town that the Marshal – the Marshal! Who has never so much as accepted a drink from a dance hall girl! – was seen with a woman, a very pretty, very young woman. Let them speculate! Let them whisper! They whisper about him enough already, about his mask, about his manners and his quietness, about his rumoured history. What is one more thing on top of that when, chaste as it may be, _he_ is the man who is taking Christine Daaé home?

 _He_ is the man who is going to marry her.

Giddiness rises inside of him again, and he wants to laugh, wants to dance, wants to swing her around in the street for all to see. She agreed to marry him, and she came all this way, thousands of miles just to do that, to marry him, _him_ of all men when she could surely have her pick of any man, with eyes like that and hair like spun gold and—and—

And oh Lord he is waxing poetic. The blade must have been poisoned. Or else he lost more blood than he thought he did. That would certainly explain the lightheadedness, and as they leave the Western Union office, her arm threaded through his, he fights not to lean on her. She should not have to support him when she must be exhausted, after travelling all that way.

Thank God Aman carried her bags on ahead. He must be cooking supper by now, and simple though it will likely be after his journey, it will be more than enough. He’s not hungry and besides, if this lightheadedness is a sign of poisoning then it is probably best that he not eat much.

He should probably see about updating his will, after the ceremony tomorrow. Christine will have to be accounted for. So help him, but he will not leave her destitute after bringing her all this way. It wouldn’t be right.

At the very least, she will get his share of the house. That should go some way towards easing things for her.

Ruminating on the thought of his possibly imminent death from poisoned blade and how to ensure Christine is looked after in the event of such keeps his mind occupied until they are almost home. Such a strange thing, that it is hers now too. It has always been just him and Aman, ever since the war ended and even during it. It doesn’t feel half as terrifying as it should, bringing someone else into that. He expected that he wouldn’t like it, not at all. Half-feared that she might get here and he’d have to send her away again because it would all be too much. But there is something about her, a softness to her, that makes him think it might, that he might be able to tolerate having another person around.

Or maybe it is simply that he has grown used to young people. De Chagny Junior started out a trial, after all, and now Erik can almost say that he likes the boy.

But he will not admit that for anything.

Or maybe he can tolerate Christine because she might still decide to leave. She still has time for that.

(He hopes, dear God he hopes, that she stays.)

“Your room is around the back.” He’s hoarser than he expected, and it strikes him that this is the first time he’s spoken a word since he agreed to take her to the Western Union. “I hope you like it.”

Her voice is soft. “I’m sure I will.”

Aman greets them just as he opens the door. “It took the two of you long enough!” Hands on his hips, he’s the picture of a stern housewife, and a rush of affection fills Erik for his oldest and dearest friend. “Supper is almost ready.”

* * *

 

The Marshal – Erik – doesn’t take his mask off to eat, he simply uses the good half of his mouth, and for the first minute it is the single most startling thing Christine has ever seen. But Mister Hariri – Aman, he insisted she call him when he shook her hand and smiled – doesn’t even seem to notice, and she supposes it must be the usual way, so she turns her attention to her own meal before her, and tries not to think about it.

It is some sort of meat stew, and she is slightly afraid to ask what is in it, but she has to admit it’s delicious. Aman thanks her when she says as much, and Erik’s lips twitch as if he might be on the edge of smiling.

They eat in silence, and afterwards Erik shows her around the house. There is a piano and a sofa in the parlour, and it looks more comfortable than she might have expected. “You’re free to do whatever you want,” Erik says, making a sweeping gesture with his good arm. “Even play the piano.” His lips twitch into another slight smile, and she’s beginning to decide she likes it when he does that. “I can recommend some pieces, if you want. Though you probably have your own favourites. I’d enjoy hearing them sometime. Or that violin you carried.”

She’s a little rueful when she admits, “I’m afraid I’m not very good at either. The violin was my father’s.”

His smile tightens just slightly, as if she might have disappointed him, and she feels a stab of regret. “In that case, I could give you lessons. If you wish.”

“Maybe.”

They move on. He shows her Aman’s room beside his, and the doors to both of them are closed. And then he shows her her own room, and it takes her breath away. The blue-painted walls are the shade she would have chosen, and the curtains are opened to show a garden, glowing bright in the dying sunlight. Her heart throbs painfully and she turns around, tears in her eyes, to Erik, to this shy man who has done so much, who has gone to such trouble all on her account. Even stocked a case with books! She restrains the impulse to throw her arms around him.

“It’s beautiful, Erik. Thank you.”

If her voice catches he doesn’t seem to notice, and his voice is soft as he whispers, “It’s the least I can do.” He leans in, and for a moment she thinks he might kiss her, might bow his head and brush her lips with his, and her breath hitches in her throat, and she resolves that she will let him, if he wishes, and it strikes her that his eyes are glowing with the sunlight, and she wonders what a kiss from those half lips might feel like. Then the moment passes and he withdraws.

“Sleep well, Christine.”

Before she can get her breath, before she can reply, he closes the door gently behind him, and she sighs, suddenly exhausted. Her heart aches with desperate loneliness as she turns back to the room that is all hers, and she kicks off her shoes, lies down on the big bed, bigger than the one she shared with Sorelli, and is asleep without another thought.


	6. Wedding

She’s going through with it. She’s actually, genuinely, going through with it. She’s going to marry a man she’s only known a day. Not even a day! Half a day! Or a little more. A man she’s only exchanged a handful of letters with. And he seems nice enough, nicer even than she might have thought, polite, a little shy. He saw to all of this for her, designing her room and she never would have expected that. But what if he’s secretly a brute? What if he’ll beat her or force himself on her? Some husbands do that. Some men, not even husbands. She’s heard the cautionary tales, seen the scars, and all she knows about—about marital relations she’s learned from Sorelli. She has no real _experience_. Not of a man.

She could barely eat at breakfast, still slow from sleep, and half-frozen with the mounting worries in her head that have all swirled back in now that she is here and she has met Erik and the world hasn’t ended and nobody has died.

Every minute it feels as if everything is about to come crashing down. As if some unknown misstep will send her back to New Orleans, will cause Erik to drop dead in front of her.

Is it better if he dies before or after the wedding? Better to be a widow or merely another bereaved fiancée?

She’s got to stop thinking he’s going to die. It will drive her insane!

Not as if she isn’t halfway there already with worry.

Her daze is why it is only when she returns to her room (and it is still such a strange thought, _her room_. Is all of this privacy a good thing or a bad thing? Should she run, now, while she still has time, before she binds herself to him?) that she realises her curtains are closed, and she woke up under the blankets on her bed even though she distinctly remembers falling asleep on top of them, and planning to close the curtains as soon as the light died from the sky.

Someone came in last night, when she was asleep. Someone closed her curtains so the sunrise would not wake her, and tucked her into bed and—and—and set that pitcher of water on the bedside table! Someone—

Erik.

It must have been Erik.

And like that, the desire to run drains from her. A man so polite, so concerned about her comfort, would hardly throw her out, could hardly turn out to be a brute.

She nods resolutely to herself, and goes to her suitcase, heaves it onto the bed and opens it. The blue dress is lying there on top, as neatly folded as when she put it in and she lifts it out carefully, shakes it loose. There will be creases, now, after the journey.

Maybe they have an iron she can borrow.

* * *

 

He forgets, frequently, how terrible his face looks. It’s easy to forget, really, because so often he just refuses to look. He perfected the art of shaving the good half of his face without looking at the mirror long ago. But he looks, now, in honour of the day. Examines the canyon-like fissured cracks that stretch from nose to ear, that twist his mouth into a grotesque leer.

Time has not improved the reflection any. He looks like the survivor of a terrible plague.

Christine is a nice girl, at least, she seems to be. He doesn’t think she carries any unseemly expectations. If she did she surely would have balked at having her own room! But she barely spoke at breakfast. What if that’s a sign? What if she has decided to run, now, this close to when they are to be married?  She might knock on his door and ask to be walked back to the stage station. And who would he be to refuse? He would be breaking the very laws he is charged to uphold if he forced her to stay!

But what if she doesn’t run? What if she goes through with it and they marry and then when night comes she forces the point about relations? Cold sweat beads on his forehead, wholly unrelated to the throbbing of the stitches in his arm. How could he say no to her without making her more suspicious? She already must be wondering what exactly his face looks like under the mask. She’ll gawk at him, as if he’s a curiosity, as if he belongs in some show of freaks. His face is only the beginning of the deformity, after all. If she sees that he’s skeletal underneath, the way his ribs poke through, the scarring and fissures that stretch to match his face… She’ll never believe it was a scattergun accident, not if she sees what he really looks like. Aman said he looked like Death warmed up in his black suit, the same suit he’s wearing now, but he looks like Death himself given life without his mask, without his clothes. If she saw him like that, there is no way she would not be repulsed. She would turn and run, signed marriage certificate bedamned, and then it would be all over town that the Marshal’s wife didn’t make it through the first night. The stares. The _whispers_ about his performance or lack of it. They’d never take him seriously. He’s be ridiculed, held up as an example of What Goes Wrong. They’d say, _I always suspected there must be something_. He’d have to run too. It would be the only way.

A knock on the door, the creak of the handle turning. He grabs his white mask, fumbles it into place and turns to face his caller, heart hammering, ready for Christine, ready to tell her _yes of course…_

But it is Aman. Aman, all dressed up, lips pursed as he casts a critical eye over Erik.

Then he smiles.

“No need to look so frightened.” His voice is soft as he closes the door behind him. “She’s finished ironing her dress. She’s not going to run now.”

Erik sighs, a wave of weakness passing through him as he sinks into his chair. Concern flickers at the edge of Aman’s mouth and he crosses the room, kneels before him and takes his hands, the good and the bad, and squeezes them. “I didn’t realise how worried I was,” he croaks, but Aman just squeezes his hands tighter and lets them go, fingers gentle brushing his neck as they adjust his collar.

“It’s perfectly normal. Sure about the white one?”

It’s his wedding day. He needs the mask that makes his features more tolerable. “Yes.”

Aman nods. “You have a ring for her?”

Erik pats his breast pocket and feels the small circlet in there. “Yes.”

“Good. Trev will be here soon with the buggy. Did you tell him to get flowers?”

“Roses. From the widow Valerius’ garden. She said she was happy to give them.” He feels steadier already, and he is grateful, so endlessly grateful, to have Aman here to check everything. What would he ever do without him? It all might fall apart.

“Badge?” Aman picks the silver star from the desk made to match the one pinned to his own vest, holds it up so the sun creeping through the drapes makes it shine, and Erik hesitates. Does he want to be marked as a marshal on his wedding day? Is it not supposed to be a more sacred occasion than that? Might it upset Christine for him to wear his office when they are marrying? He should leave it off. Should pretend for just one day that he is an ordinary man.

But he is not an ordinary man. And he can never pass for one, not when he is wearing a mask, and certainly not without it. What does a badge matter on top of that?

Besides, he feels safer with it on him. He nods, and Aman pins it to his chest, nodding approvingly before picking up the black sling. He doesn’t particularly want to wear it, in truth, but it will take the pressure off his wounded arm and help it to heal faster. He nods, and Aman helps him into it.

And then it is just his hat left, hanging on the back of the door. Aman takes his good hand and pulls him to his feet, then takes his hat and settles it on. He takes a step back, and cocks his head to admire the effect.

“Very dashing.”

Erik straightens himself, head high, and turns to the mirror, and for the very briefest of seconds feels as if he is not himself, as if he is somebody else, watching the scene from the distance. He is oddly disjointed from his own body,  hands feelings as if they are floating in the air, as if he has suddenly become wholly intangible. He reaches out to grab Aman, and feels warm skin beneath his fingers. Aman’s hand clasps his, a steadying squeeze, then the world tilts and he can breathe again, can feel the air whistling through his nose.

Trev is there then, nodding at them both, and holding out a single deep red rose. “For your buttonhole,” he says, smiling slightly. “It’s traditional for the groom to match the bride.”

* * *

 

She just has her hair pinned up and the lightest rouge applied to her lips and cheeks when there comes a knock to the door. Now that she has resolved herself to stay, to face whatever this new situation may bring her way, she feels oddly calm, as if it is right before a performance, that heartbeat before her cue comes and she takes her place. She is a performer, after all. Wife is simply another role, and if she treats it as such it should be more than all right.

She settles on the delicate hat with the veil that Sorelli slipped in her case with a handwritten note ( _every bride needs one!_ ) and collecting her little bag, she stands from her chair at the mirror, smooths her dress. She is elegant even if she does say so herself, pretty, even, and with her head held high she goes to the door and opens it.

She was expecting Erik, but instead she finds Aman. He beams at her and takes her hand, kisses it lightly before he lets it drop, his eyes dancing. “You look enchanting, Christine,” and it would be so easy for the words to sound perfunctory but he makes them genuine and she feels light as air as she smiles back at him.

“Thank you.”

“Erik is waiting in the buggy with Beth. She’s a,” he makes a vague gesture with his hand that could mean anything from “a whore” to “a widow” and a thousand things in between, “she’s _involved_ with one of the other deputies, Max. You’ll like her. She’s from Georgia. Another one of the boys, Trev, is going to drive us.”

He guides her through the house and outside where the sun is strong and dazzling though it’s not yet noon. A tall dark-haired man that she vaguely recognises from her arrival at the station helps her up into the buggy, and he smiles at her as she settles beside a red-haired woman, who’s probably the same age as her. Beth, she assumes, smiles at her and he must be Trev. Erik is sitting opposite her, and he tips his hat with his free hand, his injured arm back in the sling, even as he rearranges himself so their knees don’t touch. Then Aman settles beside Erik, and gives a nod over her shoulder, presumably to Trev who must have taken his seat behind her. Next thing they start to move, and she turns to see that they are pulled by two horses, a grey and a black.

The girl beside her, Beth, gives her a bouquet of roses, draws her attention back from the horses, and Christine smiles at her in thanks, and smiles at Erik because he must have suggested them. And is it her imagination, or does Erik colour slightly?

Or maybe the rose through his buttonhole, and she startles when she realises it matches her bouquet, and the sunlight combined just makes his visible cheek look a bit more red.

She averts her gaze, back down to the roses in her hands. The petals are soft as velvet beneath her touch, a deep red, and the thorns have been cut from the stems so they do not prick her fingers. If it were not for her hat and veil, she might take one and twist it into her hair, but for now she settles for caressing them.

The journey to the courthouse is not as long as she expected it might be, and before she knows it the buggy is stopping. Aman hops down first, and helps Erik out, which elicits a mutter from her fiancé (such a peculiar thought, that this man is her fiancé) that he is “not an invalid, thank you very much.” It is her turn next, and she reaches the ground gracefully. Erik inclines his head just slightly towards the horses.

“The dark one is Darius, Aman’s stallion, but the grey is mine, the Khanum. She can be a bit of a handful, or I might let you have her.” At his words, Christine looks again at the horses, and sees that the grey mare bears herself with what almost might be called pride, if a horse can know pride. Can horses feel pride? Maybe they can. How is she to know? She has never been around many horses.

The man she assumes to be Trev comes up to her, breaking her thoughts and extending his hand. “We haven’t been introduced yet.” His accent is light but perfectly clipped, and try as she may she cannot place it. “Roderick Q Trevelyan, but everyone calls me Trev.” The badge pinned to his chest matches the ones she’s seen Erik and Aman wearing, and she smiles as she takes his hand. He bows his hand and kisses her knuckles.

“Christine Daaé. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“You sound like a delightful woman, Miss Daaé.”

Then it is the woman’s turn, and they shake hands. “Bethany Harris. You can call me Beth.” Her smile is a little nervous. “I hope we can be friends.”

Christine hopes she can set the girl at ease. “I’d like that.”

And Beth’s smile becomes a beam.

“The others are waiting inside.” Aman nods to the door, and it is their cue to file in, she and Erik side-by-side. Not for the first time she is reminded of how he towers over her, and it makes her feel quite small.

There is a small crowd waiting in the Judge’s office, and Erik is the one who makes the introductions. “Judge Reginald Brown,” he gestures to the man sitting behind the desk, grey-haired and thin-faced, a pair of spectacles sitting on the end of his nose. “Philippe De Chagny, and his brother Raoul.” The brothers are equally blond and moustachioed, though Philippe’s hair is flaked with grey and he is sitting, his arm, too, in a sling, a pale green one that matches his shirt, and a cane sitting beside him. Raoul she recognises as the Deputy who helped her out of the stage, his badge shining on his chest, and both De Chagnys have matching smiles for her. “Maxwell Halloran, who is supposed to be minding my office in my absence.” Erik’s voice draws her attention away from the brothers, and she sees now that Maxwell, who must be the Max that Aman mentioned, is the other Deputy who rode out to meet the stage with Raoul.

“Pullman knows where to find me. I couldn’t possibly miss this.” Max Halloran’s grin is cheeky, and Erik sighs.

“So long as you get back to the office straight after.”

“Of course, sir.”

Of all of the men in the room, only the Judge and Philippe De Chagny are not wearing badges, and it strikes Christine with a little thrill that the four Deputies are all under _Erik_ , that her husband-to-be is the one with the authority. This tall, quiet man, and yet he is the one they all look to, the one they all follow. Her head spins.

She’d better not faint, not now.

The Judge calling them to attention breaks the spell, lets her get her breath, and the ceremony is oddly anticlimactic. An exchanging of vows, repetition of words. _I, Christine Freyja Daaé, take thee Erik Gerard Berry Lamonte, to be my lawfully wedded husband…I, Erik Gerard Berry Lamonte, take thee, Christine Freyja Daaé, to be my lawfully wedded wife…_

They sign their names, and the Judge proclaims them man and wife. Erik’s lips are cool pressed to her forehead, the edge of his mask soft, and between one heartbeat and the next she goes from Miss Christine Daaé to Mrs Christine Lamonte, no fanfare, no confetti (though Aman and Trev sprinkle rice over them), the earth doesn’t open up to swallow them whole. A few words, a signature, a perfectly chaste kiss.

And so they are married.


	7. Adjustment

In all of her wildest dreams, and there were some that went past even the definition of wild into full-blown fantasy, Christine never imagined that her wedding would rate a paragraph on the front page of the newspaper, but that is what she finds the next morning.

_We are pleased to announce that yesterday the nuptials took place between our own Marshal Erik Lamonte, and one Christine Daaé, a lady of unknown provenance who arrived in town on the stage from Cheyenne a mere seventeen hours before. It is rumoured that the happy couple met in Cheyenne last spring, though the lady is known to have recently resided in New Orleans. The short ceremony was officiated by Judge Reginald Brown. In attendance were Deputies Aman Hariri, RQ Trevelyan, Raoul De Chagny, and Maxwell Halloran accompanied by a Miss Bethany Harris, and former marshal Philippe De Chagny, who readers will remember resigned his position as a result of wounds sustained at the hands of the late Bob May last year. We wish the Lamontes a long and happy union._

She can’t decide whether she is amused or surprised that a story has already gone around about how she and Erik allegedly met in Cheyenne, though she is certainly bemused that they know she came from New Orleans. They must have interviewed the Western Union man.

It’s a little exciting to see her name in the paper, even if only reporting her wedding.

Erik gives her a very slight smile over his coffee before he leaves for the day, and Aman buys her a second copy of the paper. She clips out the paragraph to send to Sorelli in her next letter.

And so begins her first full day of married life.

* * *

 

Married life rapidly begins to seem much the same as unmarried life. In that first week, she sees Erik at breakfast, and occasionally at lunch. He is only at dinner if he is not working that night, but they rarely speak. He gives her a hesitant kiss on the forehead each morning before he leaves, always wearing either his black mask or a grey one, and never approaches her at night.

That first night, mere hours after they were wed, after the taking of a single photograph and a dinner at which little was said, his ring still an unfamiliar weight on her finger, she kept expecting him to come. She waited up for him, could hear him talking quietly with Aman though their voices were muffled and words indistinct. But even after the house fell silent no disturbance came to her door, and eventually she fell asleep.

The day is hers to do as she wishes. She reads the newspaper, learns quickly the details of the election that is still five months away. Erik is the Republican candidate to become Marshal in his own right, after being appointed to the role in hushed circumstances after the attack upon Philippe De Chagny. He is being challenged by two men, the Democratic candidate Walter Woods, and an independent, Johnny Rogerson. Woods has a lot of support, served as a Marshal down in Arizona for a time, and from what she can piece together he is Erik’s strongest competition.

She decides she doesn’t like him on principle.

She devotes a day to going through her bookshelves, organises them by surname of author, reads the book of poetry that Sorelli sent her off with, and the contents are enough to make her blush. She dusts, and sweeps, beats the curtains for something to do. Four days into her new situation, she spends the afternoon watching out her bedroom window at the darkening storm clouds rolling towards town, the flashes of lightning forking to the grass and rumbles of thunder above, and her heart thuds so hard it almost stops at what she swears is a funnel twisting towards the ground, but she blinks and it is gone when she looks again.

When Erik and Aman arrive home that evening, their clothes and hair soaked, water running in rivulets down their faces, she has a blazing fire in the grate and a soup made. Their clothes steam when she hangs them to dry, and Erik has already replaced his mask with a dry one even as his hair continues to drip.

She asks them about the storm, needing to prove to herself that she did not imagine what she saw, and Erik’s expression is grim as he says, “Twisters are common sometimes on the high plains. One tore through the Larson ranch house last spring.”

It is on the tip of her tongue to ask about it, but some part of her decides that she might not want to know.

Beth comes for lunch on the fifth day, when she is reading a book of poetry she pulled off a shelf by a man named Tennyson. One of the poems is about a lady named Godiva, who rides naked through the streets of Coventry so her husband will reduce taxes for the poor, and when she tells Beth about it, Beth quietly admits that she’s never been able to read much.

“Would you like me to help you?” Christine has the question asked before she has time to think about it, and Beth’s face lights up.

“You would do that?”

“Of course!”

And so Christine gains a standing appointment for Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

And yet, she’s out of place. She feels it in her bones. This is not where she belongs, where she fits. This nice house with a distant husband and his best friend. Would it be different if Erik would talk to her? Something more than a good morning and good night? If he would reach for her, if his kisses were more than chaste pecks to her forehead? If he came to her at night? Or is it simply that she is still settling in? Still adjusting to the new path in her life? Surely every new bride needs time to adjust.

Does every new wife feel as out of place as she does?

Erik’s friends are nice to her, that’s true enough, though she has barely seen each of them a handful of times. Trev asked her what she was reading, so she told him about Tennyson and held back on the poem about Godiva, and he praised her for having good taste. And Max thanked her for being kind to Beth. When she cooked a stew on her sixth night, Aman praised it. And Raoul mentioned it the next evening when he dropped in, and gave her a soft smile.

Raoul can hardly be older than she is. Maybe, in another world, if there are other worlds, he would be the one she married.

The thought stings like a betrayal. Erik brought her out here, gave her this house with her privacy, saw to her every comfort when he laid out her room. How can she think of marrying other men?

She pushes the thought away.

They are a week married when Erik’s arm is finally out of the sling. Part of her expects that he might suggest they start sharing a bed, but instead he comes to her and gives her a small bag of money.

For a terrible moment the world falls away beneath her, and all she can think is _this is it, he wants me to leave_ , but instead he takes her hand and his face, the half of it she can see, is kind.

“The Cattleman’s Ball is the fifth of July.” His voice is as soft as she has ever heard it. “And I would appreciate it very much if you were to accompany me to it. There’s enough money there that you can buy a new dress, and a few other things if you wish.”

So begins a new daily ritual. He takes her to the house of a widowed woman named Anna Valerius, who once came from Sweden too. Mrs Valerius’ eyes light up when she hears the lilt that Christine’s accent has retained, and she insists on reducing her rates for her.

“You’re the closest thing to family,” she says, and leaves Christine speechless, equal parts flattered and touched.

Every morning after breakfast, Erik walks her to Mrs Valerius’ house. There is something nice about walking through the street on the arm of her husband, as if she is a prized piece, as if he might be proud of her. He gives her a second kiss to the forehead as they part, and it warms her inside. Each kiss is one she treasures close, mulls over in the darkness of the night when the thoughts are at their worst.

He _must_ care, if he kisses her. Mustn’t he?

* * *

 

Sometimes it is Erik who is there waiting for her when she is finished getting fitted, and as they walk home he whispers to her in a low voice of the people they see, their families and their politics. On one such afternoon they see his chief opponent, Walter Woods, and Erik’s grip tightens on her arm.

“He’s dangerous,” he whispers. “I’ve never been able to make anything stick, but he’s a viper. You must never let yourself be caught by him, Christine.”

“I have no intention of it,” she whispers back, and his lip twitches just slightly.

Sometimes it is Aman who meets her instead, and he smiles and offers her his arm, apologising for Erik’s absence. But often it is Trev, and he asks her about books, asks her, mostly, about Tennyson.

“Have you tried ‘The Lady of Shalott’ yet?”

“I enjoyed it very much.” She does not tell him how Lancelot’s coal black curls reminded her of Erik’s hair, that evening he got soaked, when it dried out of its pristine hold. Or how the Lady’s run to the window to see the knight makes her think of how she waits for Erik each evening. “I might try _In Memoriam_ next.”

“He wrote it for a friend who’d died.” Something catches in Trev’s throat, and Christine wonders if she might have accidentally touched a nerve, and his voice is soft when he whispers, “It’s his best.”

* * *

 

Odd nights, soft piano music drifts to her from the parlour, and she knows it must be Erik playing. The notes are gentle, as if he is intentionally softening them so as not to disturb her, but it does disturb her, every night, draws her to her door in her nightdress and robe for to hear it better. She has never heard music so beautiful before, not even in the theatre.

She will never know what possesses her, on her tenth night. She is contemplating her books, and the melody drifting through the keyhole of her door is soft, and gentle, and she knows it, feels it in her bones, and she rises, drifts to the door, She and Sorelli sang this to each other one night, between giggles and kisses, and her heart aches to be back there, back in Sorelli’s arms.

Some unknown part of herself gains a foothold, and before she realises what she is doing her hand turns the doorknob and she is singing, softly, the words that go with the melody.

“From this valley they say you are going…”

The oil lamp is turned down low, and Erik is at the piano, his back to her. He has cast his jacket aside, and his sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, so she can see the livid red healing scar he gained the day she arrived, and the pale ridged flesh of older ones.

“For they say you are taking the sunshine…”

His fingers are long and elegant on the keys, powerful with a pianist’s musculature, and she aches to grasp them, to hold them close, lips tingling for to kiss them. Such beautiful fingers. Why is he a Marshal? He should be on a stage, should be playing concerts, should be far from here and yet here he is, and his only audience is her.

“Come and sit by my side if you love me…”

She could touch him, if she wanted. Could reach out and trace her fingers along the line of his shoulder, caress his neck. But then a voice joins hers, soft and low, his voice, surely, it must be, like silk beneath hers, and she swallows, and sings the last lines, their voices twining.

“Just remember the Red River Valley, and the cowboy who has loved you so true.” His fingers still on the keys, final note hanging in the air, as he turns, slowly, to face her.

“Christine,” he breathes, golden eyes brimming, and she reaches for him, brushes away the tear that slips down his good cheek, and smiles.


	8. Advance

Erik’s fingers are long and slim, gentle as they trace the violin strings. He plucks one experimentally, and hums to himself as the note rings out. “A little out of tune,” he murmurs. “To be expected. You haven’t played it?”

She’s never played the violin, was never inclined to it, even when she was small, though she loved listening to her father play and loved even more singing along with it. It was part of the reason she was happy with piano lessons, though she let them go when he fell ill and never considered taking them back up again in any serious way after he died, though he would have wanted her to. And by then, the thought of ever taking up the violin was too painful to contemplate, in however loose a way. “No,” she whispers now. “Never.”

“It’s a beautiful instrument.” He caresses the wood, fingers trailing over the delicate inlaid designs. “Your father brought it with him from Sweden, I presume?”

“He had it as far back as I can remember.”

Erik’s lip twitches slightly. “It’s in remarkably good condition for an instrument so well-travelled.”

“He always looked after it.” _Even when he was ill, even when he was dying._ “And I’ve done my best with it.”

And now, at last, Erik tears his gaze away from it and meets her eye, smiling one of his rare smiles that have come to make her heart flutter. “You’ve done well with it.” He looks back down to the violin, smooths those elegant fingers over the strings again. “I think I should like to play it sometime, if you have no objection.”

“I think I would like that.”

* * *

 

“This is how my mother taught me to play,” he says, two nights later, sitting together on the piano bench. It is very nearly distracting, the feeling of her pressed so close to him, her soft hair tickling his ear. She smells of lavender, and pine, the soaps he bought for her, and a little bit of something light and airy, that has come from Mrs Valerius’ house. He is overly conscious that he smells like horse, after checking on Ayesha who is soon due to foal, and working with the Khanum, and of gunpowder after breaking up an incident in the Kentuckian saloon. Perhaps he should bathe, the next time he comes in from work, before he settles at the piano. He shakes his head to focus on the music, taps the keys lightly, lightly. “As if a baby were asleep in the next room.”

It is how he has played each night since Christine herself came here. Since she married him.

“It’s beautiful,” she says, and her voice is so close to his ear, makes something strange and not-unpleasant squirm inside of him. He clenches his jaw tighter in restraint, tries to focus on his fingers dancing along the keys. “She must have been very talented, your mother.”

“She would have been a concert pianist if she were a man.” As it was, she sometimes played in dive bars when he was very small. His earliest memories of her involve the piano, playing with her eyes closed, her dark hair neatly twisted back and her men’s clothes. He always thought she was beautiful, and mildly frightening when she was at her music but she never frightened him, always smiled at him and pulled him close and sat him on her lap before she ever taught him to play, so that he could rest his small hands on the backs of hers and feel out the notes. She taught him to play silver dollars across the back of his knuckles to improve his dexterity and reach, and by the time he was ten he knew how to cut cards to win from spending so much time around the men in bars while she performed.

That was how she met his stepfather, whose name was denied him. His stepfather was always the problem, but those are details that Christine is best spared.

“I suspect you could have been, too. If you wanted.”

He hits a wrong note, ruins the whole piece, and lets his fingers fall silent. She does not realise what she has said, cannot realise it. How he used to imagine himself…used to decide which pieces he’d play…how he might perform them for an audience, and then, what they would think of his face. The mask would add to his allure, but there would be someone, sometime.

The memory of grasping hands through the darkness makes him shiver.

“Perhaps. In another life.” Too many things have gone wrong in this one.

She is silent, and then her hand covers his, and squeezes.

* * *

 

A handful of mornings later, Erik is on the front page of the newspaper again, and Christine is so surprised by what she reads she snorts her coffee. Erik, using the Khanum to chase down and rope a man galloping naked through town? It’s incredulous! It’s the most ridiculous thing she’s ever read!

She loves it.

And he never said a word about it as they sat the piano bench, a mere handful of hours after it happened. If she had known she would have brought it up.

Erik makes a disgruntled noise at her barely-contained snort, and lifts his own copy of the paper higher to cover his face. Aman catches her eye and grins and she knows why he insisted she read his paper before him.

She clips out the article, and saves it, and spends all day laughing to herself at the mental image.

A rider naked except for his gunbelt and hat. Sorelli would love it! And so she copies the short paragraph into her next letter.

Erik must have looked so fearsome. She’s seen him on the Khanum a time or two, the way he sways with the motion of the mare, his hands so strong on the reins. How he must have looked, his thighs pressed firm to the mare’s sides to keep him balanced, hands uncoiling the rope he borrowed off some unsuspecting cowhand (“a rawhide riata,” Aman laughed, as he relayed the tale to her in full after Erik left), feeding out the loop, the way his arms must have tightened as he threw it—

Her mouth is dry, and she attempts to read the rest of the paper when Aman has left, but Trev comes to call, bringing her a copy of Virgil’s _Aeneid_ like he said he would because Erik only has it in Latin. “We were both in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he grins, and nods at the paper. “It’s a shame to have missed such a sight.”

* * *

 

It is barely two weeks until the Cattleman’s Ball, and her dress is coming along wonderfully. Some of the other simpler dresses and underthings that only needed tailoring to her size have already been completed, and are hanging now in her wardrove. Sometimes, she puts them on, when there is nobody else in the house, and wears them just because she can, just to feel pretty. She settles at the chair in front of her vanity, ties her hair with the ribbons Erik has brought her since they started sitting at the piano together, and admires the effect, just for a little while. She will have to have a new portrait taken, to send to Sorelli, to show her how well she looks now.

Married life is not as terrifying as she expected. Maybe that’s because Erik is very much _not_ like the men she was told about.

True, she misses Sorelli, finds herself longing for her at odd times, even if just to show her something amusing in the paper, or to ask her opinion on a dress, or just to hear poetry in her accent when she reads in her soft slow way. But she has Beth, and Mrs Valerius, and while they are far from replacements, they fill the gap a little bit, each with the different sets of advice and most of it about Erik, who has at least warmed to her now.

She will tell him, soon, that she wants to hear him play her father’s violin. Maybe after the Cattleman’s Ball.

Such are the thoughts Christine is mulling over, sitting on the sofa at her needlepoint while Aman is in his armchair with a book, when there is a thud against the door. She jolts, stabs herself in the finger, and as she sucks on it she notices that Aman has gone rigid. Another thud, and he is out of his chair, motioning for her to stay sitting.

“If it’s trouble,” he whispers, eyes fixed on the door, “I want you to run. No questions. Hide in your room until it’s over.”

She wants to protest, wants to tell him that she’ll stay, that she can fight, even if it’s only a half-truth, but it might distract him, and she doesn’t want him getting hurt either, not on her account. “All right.”

A nod. “Good.”

Another thud, and what might be a groan, and Aman is across the room, knife drawn from his belt. She half-rises, ready to run if she needs to, when the door swings open and Erik falls in. Aman catches him, and before Christine can squeak he’s issuing orders.

“Hot water! And a towel! His head is bleeding!”

She had water heating on the stove already for coffee, and she rushes for it now, pours it into a basin, all the time her heart pounding _Erik Erik Erik’s hurt Erik’s bleeding you need to help him you have to help him you can’t let him die on you too…_ She grabs a clean dish towel and carries it and the water back to the parlour. Aman has gotten Erik to the sofa, lying full stretch, his legs hanging off the side of it because he’s too tall, he’s so tall.

Aman’s face is grim as he accepts the water. “Looks like someone buffaloed him. I have to take his mask off.”

She doesn’t know what buffaloed means, but she doesn’t need to. It means enough that he’s bleeding over his mask, that the blood is seeping down under the black fabric. It’s clear enough that Aman wants her to go. “I’m staying,” she whispers, and kneels beside him. “You might need help.” So help her but she cannot leave now. Someone attacked her husband, someone tried to _widow_ her after barely two weeks, and whatever is under his mask cannot be as bad as the fact as that. He needs her to stay.

Maybe if she sees what lies underneath, they might be able to talk things out.

“He wouldn’t want you to see it like this.” And implicit is, _he doesn’t want you to see it at all_. But Erik’s eyes are screwed shut, and there is sweat on his forehead, and his jaw is tight even as he whimpers again. Aman is already undoing the strap of his mask.

“I have to see it.” _He’s my husband. I have a right to. I should have insisted on it sooner. I didn’t know how much it mattered to me until now, and anyway, he needs all the help he can get._

“I know.” And Aman lifts the mask away.

It is difficult to tell, at first, how ravaged the skin is. The blood has stained it red, has seeped into the cracks, and Christine’s stomach twists when she realises it has run through these crevasses in his face, these canyons as if they are stream beds. The crevasses stretch from nose to ear, pull at the edge of his eye (how did she not notice that before? The mask couldn’t hide it fully), twist the corner of his lip. Whatever she was imagining (half his face blown off) it was not this tracking of marks, the way it looks as if someone took a knife to him and sliced and sliced and sliced.

How does she know someone didn’t do that?

“It wasn’t a shotgun blast, was it?” She is proud when her voice only trembles a little, and Aman shakes his head as he dips the cloth back into the water.

“He was born with it, most of it.” His voice is hushed. “This,” and his fingers hover over a set of ridges near Erik’s temple, where the blood has cast them into relief, “was given to him.”

“It’s horrible.” Her voce is soft, but Erik’s face has relaxed and he doesn’t seem to hear.

“It’s why he was reluctant to show you. People have been—very cruel to him.” Aman takes his handkerchief from his pocket, presses it to the gash near Erik’s hairline where the blood is still welling out. “Hold this.”

The blood is warm seeping through the cloth, and all the horror, all the revulsion, evaporates. Someone did this to Erik tonight, cracked him on the head and made him bleed. Someone carved those lines into his forehead. Someone hated him enough to punish him for what he can’t help, for how he was born. Someone hates him still and so help her if she could get her hands on them, on that person who did this to the man who has been so good to her, so gentle and kind, who could have forced her and hurt her instead, but gave her privacy and tried to protect her and plays music for her. To do that—

“They had no right,” she whispers, looking down into her husband’s slack, pallid face. “No right.” And when Aman hums in agreement, and washes the blood from Erik’s damaged cheek, she bows her head and kisses her husband’s scars.


	9. Recovery

Every time he opens his eyes, he finds her there, dim in the light that’s too bright. Her golden hair glows, her blue eyes shine looking down at him, her soft lips smile or whisper words he can’t catch but her voice is so soft it doesn’t matter, and sometimes, sometimes, those lips brush his forehead, press lightly to his cheek, and his heart catches as he whimpers, as he tries to grasp her hand, tries to keep her there, always, so soft and so warm. But he is too clumsy, her fingers slip through his, and tears spring to his eyes that are not from the pounding pain in his skull, but it’s worth it, more than worth it, when she sets aside her book or her sewing, and smooths away the tears with one featherlight touch, before her fingers wrap around his and squeeze them tight, and the soft lips are pressed to his right cheek once more.

He murmurs something indistinct, or must, or thinks he does, and her voice is low in his ear as his eyes slip closed.

She is there, too, in his dreams. Smiling, singing, eyes bright as bluebonnets under the sun, her hand so small in his. She is all there is, encircling his senses, and when the shadows flicker at the edges of his vision she drives them away, her voice soft as silk and beautiful, and her fingers trace his cheek, the lightest whisper of a touch through the throbbing pain.

How many times he comes in and out he doesn’t know, only that he wakes, once, and the air is so cold on his cheek he knows it must be bare. His heart pounds, pain throbbing behind his eyes. Bile rises acid and sour in his throat, and then he is being rolled on his side, a hand rubbing his back as he retches and heaves, and her voice is soft, so soft in his ear.

“It’s all right, Erik, it’s all right. Don’t cry, you’re all right, I promise.”

A hand smooths back his hair, he sips the cool soothing water pressed to his lips, and then the kiss comes light on his bad cheek and he is not wearing a mask, he is not wearing a mask but someone kisses him anyway, someone kisses him, and it must be her, must be Christine, but he is not wearing a mask.

He is not wearing his mask.

Then he is on his back again, and his eyes are closed, tears damp on his lashes from the pain in his skull, and he is not wearing his mask, but there is a line of small kisses pressed to his forehead. And those soft kisses are all he knows.

* * *

 

Someone told Raoul that Erik had been hurt, and he came running with the doctor as soon as he could. Even now, two days later, Erik sleeping more peacefully than he has since he stumbled in the door, Christine doesn’t know if she can ever thank Raoul enough. It could have been hours, between Erik’s fitful waking and his incoherent mumblings and his getting sick and the bleeding stopping and restarting again, before Aman was ready to go for the doctor. But the doctor came, and stitched the wound to Erik’s head without flinching at his face, which makes Christine suspect he has seen it before, and he gave Erik laudanum for the pain, and something else for the sickness, and said that he must be kept in a dark room and given only weak broths until the nausea and headache subside, and made it plain that Erik must stay in bed for at least a week, even after regaining his faculties.

Christine quietly suspects that the headache might keep him there longer.

She has not left his side since. Partly because she wants to be here, can’t bear the thought of leaving him alone, and partly because every time she tries to leave Erik whimpers and his fingers tighten feebly around hers. They had to carefully replace her hand with Aman’s for her to be able to freshen up.

But he is easier, now, than he was, his eyes moving slowly beneath the lids, and when those eyes flicker open they are quiet as they rove around the room.

His gaze falls on her, dazed and heavy, and for a moment his brow furrows before it smooths and he blinks slowly.

“Christine?” His voice is hoarse from disuse and retching, but it is his voice and the relief of hearing it makes her heart swoop.

“I’m here.” She keeps her own voice low so as not to make his headache worse, but he doesn’t answer. His lips just twitch slightly as his eyes fall closed again, and he sighs as he slips back into sleep.

She hesitates only a moment, not wanting to wake him, and kisses his forehead gently.

His face is not so terrible as she thought it might be. Maybe some of that is because she knows now it is how he was born, that a multitude of tiny pellets did not gouge those gaps into his skin, or maybe it is simply that she is getting used to it, after two days of looking at it endlessly, of lightly tracing it with her fingers, ever-careful not to wake him. His lips are whole, the twist is only at the very end, the corner, and looking at them, fingers hovering just over them, she does not think she would mind kissing him, properly, if he would let her.

It might be nice.

* * *

 

As the second day becomes the third, and the third ticks on towards the fourth, Erik’s head slowly becomes more his own. He is lucid when he is awake, though he still sleeps mostly, the headache throbbing behind his eyes and foul laudanum putting him under. He has no memory of what happened, of who it was that cracked him on the skull with the butt of a pistol, but even hazy as his mind is, he has suspicions. Those suspicions tend towards the political and his particular rival, Walter Woods. But it is nothing more than feeling in his gut, and he dare not speak it, not even to Aman, lest anyone suggest paranoia.

Still. He would almost say that it is nice, to have Christine there when he wakes. It is hazy, but he seems to remember a hand holding his, soft cool fingers and a gentle voice in his ear. And was he dreaming, or does he remember lips pressed to his forehead, featherlight little kisses? He doesn’t think he was dreaming, but it is impossible to tell, and he feels ill at the thought of asking her, at being so presumptuous as to suggest she might have kissed him.

What if he is wrong? And the suggestion repels her? True, he is positive that she told him it was all right, his not wearing a mask, but being accepting of the way his face looks does not equate to kissing him. He insists on putting the mask on as soon as he can hold the thought for longer than a moment, and an odd look of pity crosses her face for only an instant, but it is enough to make his heart clench.

Pity. For his injury, probably.

That must be why she put up with the sight of him.

The steady stream of visitors keeps him occupied, works to distract him from dwelling on things that Christine may or may not have said and done, what her motivations may or may not have been. Aman refuses to tell him anything of consequence, as if it might only provoke him into leaving bed (ordinarily maybe, but the throbbing in his head is so persistent he fears he might topple over if he tried.) Trev brings a deck of cards, never mind that the numbers swim before his eyes, and lets him win. Max looks in with paperwork that needs his signature, hidden from Aman, and tells him Beth is smitten with Christine. De Chagny Junior brings him updates on the Khanum and Ayesha. So help him but he _will_ be on his feet enough to attend when she starts to foal.

Philippe brings him idle bits of gossip, sitting at an angle to take the weight off his bad hip until Christine sees, and brings him cushions so he can arrange himself more comfortably. Philippe smiles at her, and Erik’s heart throbs at her smile, at his wife being so kind to one of his oldest friends.

He could kiss her, if she would let him.

The thought comes out of nowhere, leaves him breathless. Kiss her? Some part of him wants to kiss her? That’s—that’s—that’s not _usual_ , not for him. He doesn’t go around wanting to kiss people. He’s never wanted that. He’s only ever even thought about it in the most theoretical of ways, as a thing that _other people_ want to do. As a thing that Aman does quite frequently but still as something that has never applied to him, to his future. He only married her to try to win an election! Only gives her those forehead kisses because it feels like something he should do!

Though they feel nice, if he is being honest. Her skin is very soft beneath his lips.

But he wants to kiss her, properly.

What’s he supposed to do about that?

* * *

 

Beth persuades her off to bed, insisting that she has to get some rest and not just wear herself out sitting beside Erik. And Christine is reluctant to go, but when Beth stumbles through ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ with only a few mistakes, leaving Erik’s side is worth it, and her heart glows with happiness for her new friend who beams with delight.

She sleeps, and dreams of Erik, dreams of kissing him (properly), and stroking his hair, and holding him close, and wakes feeling peculiar and aching to see him. Beth is still sitting beside her, and smiles to see her awake.

“Mrs Valerius was here, with a basket. She’s been cooking.”

The promise of a basket of Mrs Valerius’ excellent cooking is more than enough to lift the peculiar feeling. Dreams don’t mean anything anyway. Dreams are just dreams, and sometimes they’re nice and sometimes they’re strange and sometimes they’re nice _and_ strange, but she doesn’t mind so long as they’re not terrible.

Aman is dozing when she goes in to visit Erik, propped in the chair beside the bed with a book of some sort open in his lap. Erik himself is asleep, good half of his face pressed into the pillow, hand hanging limp off the bed. She picks up his hand, careful not to disturb him, and in a moment of impulse presses her lips to his knuckles, before settling it down gently on the bed and fixing the sheets over him. His lips twitch, as if he might smile in his sleep, and she drops another kiss to his forehead, and smooths back his hair.

Aman doesn’t stir as she picks the book off his lap, but she jumps when she realises it is not a book but a catalogue, a catalogue of prospective brides. She would recognise it anywhere, and she glances down out of curiosity, only to find it is open on her page, her paragraph circled in red ink. She smiles to herself, thinking of Erik going through it meticulously, thinking of him choosing her, _her_ when he could have chosen anyone, any other woman, and something warm bubbles inside her, something that glows a little brighter when she glances at Sorelli’s paragraph above hers, and finds a small blue star next to it.

She glances at Aman, still asleep in the chair, and wonders.

* * *

 

By the end of the week, Erik is back on his feet. He can’t focus long enough to read the paper, but it is ten days until the quarter mile race on the Fourth of July, and by God he is going to ride in it. Darius might be Aman’s horse, but Darius hasn’t a hope in hell of going fast enough if Aman rides him, and Erik has always weighed light for his height. It only makes sense that he be the one to take on the horse, he or De Chagny Junior, and Raoul would probably only get himself thrown. He will ride and he will win, throbbing headache or no, and he will use his betting money to buy something nice for Christine.

Heaven knows she deserves it.


	10. Rodeo

Some part of Erik knows that it is not wise to ride in a quarter-mile race when he still has a lingering headache and only scraped a handful of hours of broken sleep, bundled up in a coat in his office with his hat shading his eyes, but riding in a quarter-mile race is exactly what he intends to do.

The race is still three hours away. He sips coffee and rubs his eyes to stop them feeling so much like sandpaper.

* * *

 

Sorelli confessed, in her last letter, that she is writing a man, but gave no other details than that. It is only the second time she has seen fit to respond to a man’s letter of inquiry, and Christine must admit that her curiosity is piqued. Especially if, as some part of her suspects, Aman is considering Sorelli’s description.

Should she say something, to either of them? What if she’s wrong and the marking in the catalogue is not Aman’s but Erik’s from before? What if Sorelli is writing someone else entirely?

It might be nice, if her dearest friend and Erik’s were to find each other…

No! No. She will not intervene. If they are writing each other then all well and good and hopefully something can come of it. If she is wrong, she will not risk upsetting either party, though she knows Sorelli would take it all in good humour.

(She doesn’t think she’s wrong.)

(She hopes she’s not wrong.)

But it’s the Fourth of July, and she pushes all thoughts of romantic machinations from her mind. Erik and Aman and the boys (as she has started calling them, only because Erik calls them that) are busy keeping the peace. “It’s the one day they’re allowed to carry guns in town,” Erik’s expression was sour as he buckled on his gunbelt and she couldn’t help admiring how long and nimble his fingers looked. “It’s more than my life is worth to try and stop them.” The good news that came with Ayesha’s foaling in the night (a delicate filly from Darius, apparently, from Erik’s excited account when he woke her with the piano at five a.m before returning to his office when Aman practically ran him out of the house) had evaporated by the end of breakfast.

She wished him well in the race, and gained a slight smile.

Christine, for her own part, saw enough of Fourth of July parades back in New Orleans, and they were mostly full of drunks still angry over how the war ended. It’s only to Sorelli she’s ever admitted that she’s not quite certain what, exactly, the war was over. How could it ever have touched her? She was still only a baby in Sweden. Her father didn’t know there had even been a war until they came to America. The finer points of who did what to who and when is not something she has ever much cared to follow up, but she knows enough to know the Fourth of July usually spells trouble.

It’s horrible, to think of Erik caught out in the middle of all that.

“I don’t care much for the parade either,” and Beth’s smile is bemused, “but we can go to the bronc riding. And the race! We’ve got to go to the race.”

Christine’s knowledge of what bronc riding is has been gained in the last two days, and mostly amounts to deciding that the whole thing sounds dangerous and painful. It’s a comfort that Erik is avoiding that part of the festivities, but Trev and Raoul are competing, and she supposes it might be interesting to see. Maybe.

Better than not being able to read for all the music and yahooing in the streets.

She puts on one of her new dresses, sky-blue, and picks up the parasol that Erik bought her to match it. She is vaguely aware that blue means she has chosen a side in the old hostilities from the war, but it is the colour that suits her best, and surely no one could accuse her, a woman, of being partisan. Hopefully it is the side Erik would have chosen.

Maybe it is the side he was on.

But it is twenty years ago! Or almost. It hardly matters now.

She sighs, and consults the mirror. She looks fine, lovely, actually, even if she does say so herself. Blue has always been her colour, and so with her head held high she goes back into the parlour, to Beth.

And finds that Beth is not alone.

Philippe De Chagny is leaning heavy on his cane beside the door, wearing a dark blue uniform, his bad arm in a sling to match it. He cuts a fine figure, moustache neatly combed, blue eyes sparkling, and blond hair slicked back, a black hat in his hand, and the smile he gives her is warm, though it is the first time she has seen him with a pistol at his hip.

“Erik sends his compliments,” and he winks. “And I felt two fine ladies such as yourselves should not be unaccompanied. If I may be allowed to escort you?”

Something flutters deep inside Christine, some soft feeling of affection, and she smiles back at him, and offers him her hand.

“We would be honoured to accompany such a man as you,” and she flutters her lashes at him mock-flirtatiously. He is just the sort of man Sorelli would like, and something about the way he purses his lips in a clear effort not to laugh reminds her of her dearest friend.

Behind her Beth giggles, and affects a faux French accent.

“It would be our pleasure, Monsieur.”

They link arms with him, Christine taking his good arm even as Beth moves to his good side. “I warn you, ladies, I do not have the fastest pace. But we should make the corrals in time to see everyone of interest.”

Everyone of interest, Christine supposes, being only Trev and Raoul. “That’s fine by me.”

* * *

 

And they do make the corrals, on the other edge of town, in good time. Philippe keeps up conversation even as he hobbles, pointing out people in the crowd, and commenting on how much he prefers this year to last year, when he was still confined to his bed. “It was all I could do to convince Trev to ride. The man was worse than a mother hen.” Every time he mentions Trev, there is a note of affection in his voice that does not escape Christine, and it, too, reminds her faintly of Sorelli, and how she comments on people she has taken a fancy to.

It is enough to make her wonder.

He tells her about Erik, too. How he does not envy him the marshal job, not on this day, and how he might be hard-pressed to make the race on time but will do his damndest to be there early. “He was always a stickler for punctuality, even twenty years ago.”

“You knew Erik twenty years ago?” This bit is news to her, and she latches onto it, craving every scrap she can learn of her husband’s history.

Philippe hums. “He was my commanding officer. During the war. I was a lieutenant fresh out of West Point, and he was our captain and then our major.”

And the sudden desire to see Erik in what surely must have been a blue uniform to match Philippe’s is overwhelming.

“He must have looked very impressive.” If she is a little breathless, Philippe does not seem to notice.

“Even more formidable than he is now. And very dashing.” And he quirks his lip as he looks at her, as if he knows she suspects his proclivities.

The crowd is thick around the corrals, but as people see Philippe they move aside. Some of them nod at him, and others look away, and on old man tips his hat to all three of them, and part of her wonders if this may be part of the reason Philippe offered to escort them, to be sure they get a good view.

They stand two back from the railing. There is already a rider in action, and even as she watches the black horse tosses his burden aside. She winces as the cowboy hits the ground, swearing she can hear bones crack, but he is up and dusting himself off before she has time to blink.

“A poor effort from Justin Lattimer.” The announcer — a portly man in a blue suit — is on a high stand, like the base of a gallows, and Christine shudders at the thought.

“Lattimer was never much good anyway,” Philippe mutters, and his offhand comment drives away the brief chill that comes over her.

* * *

 

The bronc riding is just as violent as Christine expected it might be, and she watches the whole thing with her heart in her mouth, frequently clutching Philippe’s arm tighter. One would-be rider gets his hand stomped on when the horse bucks him off, and his shriek is piercing through the shouting of the crowd. Another is carried unconscious from the corral, and his horse bolts for the railing. For one heart-stopping moment she thinks he might crash through, but he stops hard, back legs folding beneath him in a cloud of dust, and a couple of wranglers rush him back to the gate. Philippe is steadying beside her, his occasional off-hand comments a relief from the scene before her, and the cheering of the crowd makes her heart pound harder.

The names of the riders all go over her head, until the announcer up on his platform calls, “RQ Trevelyan!”

Philippe tenses beside her, and she leans into him, gripping his arm tight. But Trev’s ride is barely the length of two heartbeats. The strawberry roan bucks to the centre, springs into the air all four legs off the ground and kicks back viciously as he lands. Trev is tossed high into the air, landing hard with a thud. She cries out, Philippe gasping beside her, and then Trev is back on his feet, and he waves at the crowd. He jogs to the railing, and it is then she realizes he can see them, when he climbs out and pushes his way through the crowd to stand in front of them. He kisses her on the cheek, panting, his face damp with sweat, lips hot, and then kisses Beth, and winks at Philippe, and claps him on the shoulder.

“You’ll get yours tonight.” She almost doesn’t catch the words, but when she realizes what he’s said, it’s a struggle to keep her face impassive. Philippe snorts, and Trev kisses her cheek again and says, “duty calls,” and is gone in a moment, lost in the crowd.

“Insufferable man,” Philippe mutters, but his ears are burning, and she knows her suspicion is correct.

Sorelli would adore him, no questions asked.

Her private amusement is short-lived. The rider in the arena is thrown off, his grey mount bucking free, and then the announcer is calling, “Raoul De Chagny!” and Philippe’s arm tightens in hers.

It’s the strawberry roan, back again. And she cannot look as Raoul, dear sweet Raoul who always has a smile for her and a good word for her efforts in the kitchen, who helped her out of the stagecoach on the very evening she arrived in town, gets tossed around on the horse’s back as if he were no more than a doll. She screws her eyes shut, teeth digging into her lip, as the crowd roars and the horse snorts and she can smell the dust kicked up dry and hot, hear the thudding of Raoul’s body as he gets slammed into the horse’s back again and again. Why would he put himself through this? How could he and Trev think inflicting something like this on themselves is fun?

A crunch, and her eyes flicker open, heart stalling at the sight of Raoul on the ground, lying still, the horse’s hooves crashing down an inch from his head.

He curls into a ball and the horse jumps away and then is on his feet, grinning and sweeping his hat off, bowing to the crowd like any seasoned performer, and she’s clapping so hard her hands sting, and Philippe’s eyes are closed, head tilted up the sky, as he mouths what might be a prayer.

Raoul climbs out, and comes to them, and with his good arm Philippe pulls him in for a hug.

“Don’t ever do that to me again.” His voice is muffled, and Raoul pulls away.

“I won’t promise something I might not be able to keep.”

Philippe looks as if he might say something, but anything it is is lost to the announcement that Raoul has come second place and won fifty dollars. He whoops and kisses her cheek, pulls Beth in for a hug, and grins at Philippe.

“Can’t say it wasn’t worth it!”

First place goes to Oliver Johnston, whose ride they missed or else she didn’t pay much attention to, and the faces of both De Chagnys darken, Philippe muttering an oath, and Raoul glowering.

Beth grasps her hand, and her breath is hot in her ear. “He’s Woods’ top man.” Her look is meaningful. “And he’s hard on some of the other girls.”

Christine can’t pick him out, and for that she is grateful.

With the excitement over, the crowd is already dispersing, the bulk of it heading out behind the barns, to the strip of land where the race will take place, and Raoul gives them his apologies. “I was lucky to have time for this.” They wish him well, and wish him safe, and then Philippe links his arms with Christine and Beth’s again, and they follow the crowd.

This time, as they walk, they do not talk, each of them slipping into their own thoughts, but she does not miss Philippe’s troubled expression.

This close to the start of the race, her thoughts turn back to Erik. It is a relief that he did not choose to compete in the bronc riding. It was difficult enough to watch Trev, and impossible to watch Raoul, but if Erik was there instead?

She could hardly bear to even be at the arena.

But the town is busy, and it is the Fourth of July. Is he safe? What if he’s in trouble even now? What if he’s hurt? Or is he already out here with Darius, warming the horse up? Darius is probably stabled in one of these barns. Is Aman coming to watch?

Will she get to see Erik before the race starts?

Oh but she hopes Erik is safe. Fourth of July is always a mess, and if something were to happen to him—

She swallows down her worry when they stop walking, and Philippe squeezes her hand, drawing her attention back to their surroundings. They are out behind the barn, and grass that was faintly green a month ago has browned and dried. There is a cluster of horses only a little away from them, fifty paces maybe, and her breath catches in her throat. Among all the greys and browns and a solitary palomino, is the distinctive black coat of Darius, shining in the afternoon sun, and on his back, looking tall and slim in just his shirt sleeves, badge shining pinned to his chest, brim of his hat shading his mask, is Erik.

Erik. Safe. Her heart lurches at the sight of him, at how regal he is the saddle, shoulders straight and head high as if he is still a cavalry officer, as if he belongs there, as if he is a lord or a knight sent down from that book of Tennyson (as if he is Sir Lancelot, and Darius his war horse) and she swallows hard, mouth dry.

God, but this is her husband. This is the man whose name she wears.

He’s so proud.

He’s beautiful.

She swallows, and inhales. They have arrived just in time. She has barely gotten her heart under control and given Philippe a smile of thanks, when the horses loop as one into a loose line, and then there is the crack of a gun and they are off.

The thunder of hooves drums the ground beneath her, rolling in her ears, pounding in her chest, and she loses sight of Erik in the rush, catches sight of the silver of his badge, the sun shining on it, and her heart is racing in her throat her breath caught as she watches him streak forward and Darius is nose and nose with a brown horse beside him then Erik leans forward and Darius pulls ahead and she blinks—

\--and she blinks in time to see Erik fall sideways and hit the ground. There are people shouting, the horses running, the announcer gesturing at someone behind him and she is running, running, skirt hitched up, parasol lost somewhere behind her, eyes trained only on Erik, on Erik, on Erik on the ground, on Erik struggling to his feet and she is beside him and she is crashing into him—

His arms come around her, steady her, save them both from falling and she doesn’t realise she is trembling until his hand is warm cupping the back of her neck and she pulls him close, presses into him, needs to feel him, needs to hold him, she could have lost him, she could have lost him.

And his voice is soft in her ear. “Christine, what’s wrong? What happened? Are you all right?” he’s pulling back, golden eyes brimming with concern as he looks down at her and she swallows and whispers, “You—you—” looking up into his pale face, half a face, his shining golden eyes _he’s all right he’s all right,_ and her hand slips up, cups the nape of his neck, and pulls him down, and his lips twitch and then she is pressing her lips to his, and they are cool, cooler than she expected as they part, the ridge of his mask digging into her cheek as he gasps into her mouth, and she pulls back, shocked at herself, gasping.

He stares down at her, eyes shining, lips still parted as he blinks, and she swallows.

“Thank God,” she whispers, and buries herself in his arms again.

 


	11. Ball

Dawn is just breaking when at last he makes it home. It has been a reasonably quiet Fourth of July, only a handful of idiots shooting at things other than the sky and three brawls, two knifings. A thousand times better than the carnage of last year.

Still, the day has been too long. Was too long even without Darius’ bridle and stirrup strap breaking during the race. But they were not simple breaks, were they? If they were, he wouldn’t feel so out of sorts now, so on edge as if there is someone waiting in every shadow.

(The ruling was that he was still on the horse as he crossed the line in front of Luther Jones’ bay mare, and so the consensus is that though he was half-off at the time, he still won. He tried to give half of the money to Aman, to cover the damages, but Aman refused, looking faintly green.)

He checked the bridle in the morning, and the saddle, and so did Aman. Both were in perfect condition, and Aman has always kept his tack to the highest standard. So how could they simply break?

They didn’t. He knows that, saw the evidence of it with his own eyes. The breaks were too straight, too neat. The underside of the leather straps must have been sliced with a knife, between morning and tacking up for the race, when he was running late after pulling Josiah Donovan off that German fiddle player and had no time to give things a last once over. If someone had wanted Darius to lose, there were other forms of sabotage. A small piece of sponge up his nose, a sharp kick to his shin. A pebble jammed into the frog of one of his hooves. No. If someone had targeted Darius, there were better ways than sabotaging the tack.

And everyone knew it was not Aman due to ride the horse, but him.

The peace that fills him with the realisation that someone tried to kill him, someone hoped the bridle and stirrup would snap in the thick of the race and he be trampled, is a relief.

Someone trying to kill him he can deal with.

So long as that someone doesn’t harm a hair on Christine’s head.

His heart twists at the thought of the girl, his wife, and lips tingle with the memory of her kiss. She kissed him. She really kissed him. It was not his imagination. Why would she do a thing like that? _Clearly it means she likes you and was happy to see you safe_. Aman’s words echo in his ears from barely twelve hours ago (God, has it been half a day already? And Philippe just cocked a brow and gave him an _I told you so_ look) and he swallows.

She likes him. She really likes him enough to want to see him well. He will admit he suspected as much with the way she was always there when he was confined to bed, but suspecting it and having her kiss him on the mouth are two very different things.

And kiss him on the mouth she did.

They have not spoken of the kiss, but he still feels it as if it is fresh-pressed to his lips again. There was too much to do, too much to see to. Darius, and the fallout of the race, and Aman, and keeping the peace. He let her go with what he hopes was a smile and not some distorted grimace (he wants it to have been a smile, doesn’t want her to think she made a mistake), and with trembling hands turned his attention back to the horse.

Christine is sleeping quietly, now, face pale in the watery dawn light. She has neglected to close her curtains again, and it woud hardly be right to let the bright sunlight bother her. As silently as he can, he slips across the room and pulls the curtains closed. They rattle on the rail and a whimper comes from the bed. He darts back to the door.

It would not do, to be discovered in her room as she sleeps. She might think he was spying on her. But he glances back to the bed, and she hasn’t stirred, one hand still curled on the pillow beside her head, fingers pale and still.

For a moment, one mad moment, he wants to kiss her on the forehead. His lips burn with longing, but he purses them tight. It is one thing for her to kiss him in celebration of his survival. But she would hardly appreciate it if he kissed her in her sleep.

However chaste a kiss it might be.

He closes the door softly behind him as he retreats, and resolves himself to try to sleep.

* * *

 

They have twenty minutes to get to the hotel for the Cattleman’s Ball, and the walk takes fifteen on a good day, never mind when his legs are aching from the long night and the race and he’ll have Christine on his arm, but she’s still not ready. What she and Beth could be doing in there that could take this long he has no clue and he’s not sure he really wants to know. Does it always take women this long to get dressed?

Granted, he hasn’t seen the dress. She gave him one of the smiles that make his heart flutter in that odd and troubling way, and told him he would have to wait. Maybe it has to be tied in a complicated fashion.

Women’s clothes are an unfathomable nightmare.

Thank God he’s never had to know to undress one of them.

(His cheeks burn at the very thought.)

He consults his watch. Nineteen minutes. Taps his fingers against his knee, turns his hat in his lap, forces himself to take his hands off it. It wouldn’t do to crease it.

He’s gone to the trouble of buying himself a new suit for the occasion, a very fine dove grey with a matching frock coat. He’s paired it with a burgundy cravat that he’s always been fond of, and a silk shirt in pale pink. The silver cufflinks were a gift from the Cattleman’s Association for helping them with a rustling situation, and with his white mask he is reasonably certain that he looks better than he ever has before in his life.

Philippe certainly would think so, but his hip is giving him too much grief after the excitement of yesterday for him to be here. Aman took one look at him and passed his presentation more than sufficient.

He might look well now, a proper candidate for marshal, but he’ll look even better with Christine on his arm.

If she’s ever _ready_.

Eighteen minutes and there is a knocking on the door. He loops his watch and settles it carefully back into his pocket, stands and checks his gun at his hip. He is the only man who can attend the Cattleman’s Ball openly heeled (though he suspects any number of derringers and small knives will be present), but he’s not taking any chances and he know the ranchers respect that. A couple of them, Malley and Eldridge, are committed Democrats, but possibly this endeavour and his solution to the rustling will help to sway them.

He settles on his hat, and reasons that any man who might attack him in his own home is unlikely to knock first.

Sure enough the door opens, and Max steps in, badge shining pinned to his chest. “I thought you might want the buggy,” and his smile is knowing. “It’ll get you there faster than walking, but you’ll have to walk home. Jones claims he needs it.”

Erik is almost ashamed that he never thought of the buggy, but in fairness it has been an exceptional few days. “Thank you, Max.”

Sometimes, he wonders what he would ever do without his men.

Max’s eyes twinkle. “I’ll even drive it for you, so you can show off your wife.”

Erik fights a snort. “You truly do think of everything.”

A shrug. “Beth might have made a suggestion.”

The mention of her name seems to act as a summons, and as if on command the door to Christine’s room clicks open behind him. He turns in time to see Beth step out, and she smiles at him, a smile that becomes a grin when she looks over his shoulder at Max, before her attention turns back to him. “Your lady awaits,” and her eyes dance.

Those words must be the cue, and from behind her comes Christine, gliding out. Her teal dress, and the hint of make-up about her face bring out her eyes (were they always so blue?), her golden hair curled in neat ringlets, a shimmering blue wrap around her shoulders. She comes towards him, and he offers his hand, feeling oddly disjointed, his mouth dry as her fingers curl around his own, heart hammering in his chest.

God but she’s beautiful. How did he not notice how beautiful she is before?

She is a jewel, truly.

* * *

 

He has never been so dazzled. It is all he can do to focus, to act and not to stare, but it feels as if half his brain has ceased to work. He smiles weakly at her, tells her she looks wonderful, helps her outside and upd into the buggy, sits beside her and holds her gloved hand as Max drives them through the street, and all the time feels as if he is looking at the world through water, as if he is not himself. They arrive at the hotel, and he helps her out, and leads her in on his arm, and introduces her as, “my wife, Christine Lamonte” to Henderson and Jones and Eldridge and Patterson and Larson and McAndrews and their wives and the others, and still feels as if he is somehow outside himself, as if he might be dreaming.

It is only when he takes his first sip of bourbon, and she has been taken in by the growing circle of ladies, most of them praising her dress and her looks, that he feels as if he is coming back to himself.

“Congratulations are in order,” Jones says, lighting his cigar, and the other ranchers make noises of affirmation, “I’m sure you’ll be very happy together.”

The words are music to Erik’s heart.

* * *

 

There is politicking and it is exhausting and dull. Every time he looks, Christine is talking to one or more of the ladies, but he brings her glasses of champagne when he can (three, in total) and every time he does she smiles that smile at him. He is thankful that the ladies are being good to her, and seem to believe the story he put around town that they met in Cheyenne when he was on business, but that she was forced, for a time, to return to New Orleans. Better they believe that than the truth. If it got around that he chose her out of a catalogue, they’d look on her as if she were a whore.

They dance, twice, and each time he can barely follow the steps though Trev drilled him on them, and he knows Trev also helped Christine. She is so light in his arms, so unbelievably dainty, and he has not danced with a woman since his days as an officer during the war (and once with Aman, when they were both young and drunk), and she leans into him at all the right places, her body warm pressed into his, and it’s all he can do not to shiver, all he can do not to pull her closer.

He would slow down time if he could, reduce it just to this. Christine in his arms, smiling, blue eyes shining. The noise of the crowd fading to a hush around them. The violinist playing a soft waltz that rings out solitary and haunting, piercing straight to his heart so that his throat is dry and his pulse is racing and his head is light. Her hip warm beneath his hand. Her hand light on his shoulder. The way she presses, just a little closer, (or does she? Is it his imagination?), her lips parted. And her lips are so soft. Were soft after the race in that rush when he was finding his feet, and had to steady her in his arms, but they look even softer tonight, as soft as rose petals and he might kiss her, but a kiss in the moment like the one they shared is so very different to a kiss while dancing, and he holds himself back, swallowing the remembered taste of her on his tongue, and musters a smile.

Letting her go is unthinkable, yet for all she is smiling at him she would surely not appreciate being held even closer, and if she was closer, if he held her longer, he might weaken and give in to the tingling in his lips that tells him to kiss her.

The Ball is still ongoing when they take their leave, and will be until dawn or later. But no one questions his leaving early with his new wife, not when it is known how busy he has been, and he pleads that he feels a headache coming on, the result of overexertion on his injury that is not yet fully healed. And if they believe him he can’t know, but he suspects they’ve formed their own conclusions, especially when Eldridge quirks his brow and wishes them a good night, his eyes seeming to sparkle.

He suspects he knows what those conclusions are. But the ranchers need not know that he has no intention of such things, and certainly not tonight when his body is crying out for sleep.

They walk home arm-in-arm, beneath the sky of stars. The streets are quiet, the Milky Way strung across the sky like a string of pearls. He should buy her a string or two of pearls. They would look very delicate around her neck, and when he voices the thought her laugh fills the air, and makes his heart swell. What has gotten into him? What are these strange feelings? He wonders, again, for what must be the hundredth time since she stepped down off that stage, if he might be ill. But all of the times he has been ill before, and shot, and feverish, it has never felt as heady as this, as strangely intoxicating.

It’s better than alcohol. Better than opium. Better, even, than Vin Mariani.

They part in the parlour, with him pressing a light kiss to her forehead, wishing her sweet dreams. For a moment he considers kissing her lips, leans closer as if he might brush them, just lightly, just the faintest pressure. His heart is throbbing, blood racing in his ears, mouth dry and just as he is about to touch her, about to feel those sweet lips beneath his, his nerve fails him, and he draws back.

She gives him a slight smile, and releases his hand, and it is as if something inside has withered as he watches her slip into her room, and then, shoulders slumped, goes into his own. Aman is taking care of the office for the night, and as he hangs his frock coat, and takes the silver studs from his cuffs, he wonders, again, if he should have kissed her.

It would have been nice, just to feel her, like the way she kissed him after the race, the way her lips parted his, and she sighed softly into his mouth, and he could taste her all day, every time that he swallowed.

Would it be too forward to kiss her like that?

Might she want him to?

Should he go to her now, invent something to ask her, maybe about the other ladies, and kiss her as he leaves?

He could blame it on the champagne…

He has just turned back to the door, fixing his cravat so he will not look dishevelled as he goes to her, and comes to an abrupt halt, heart racing, as it opens. For a moment, one utterly glorious moment, he thinks he has been spared the walk, thinks she has come to him to kiss him once again, but he blinks and the blond figure resolves itself from Christine into—

—into De Chagny Junior.

It is on the tip of his tongue to say something about how he left express orders not to be disturbed, but then he sees how pale the boy is, as pale as the night Philippe was wounded, and there is blood on his hands, staining his shirt sleeves, blood so brightly red in the gas light, and his heart lurches, his head spinning.

_Not Aman. Please God not Aman._

Raoul’s voice is rough before he can ask.

“Trev has been attacked.”


	12. Understanding

There was no chance of her going to bed and pretending as if everything was fine and normal, knowing that one of her friends (and she has come to see all of Erik’s men as friends) has been injured. But especially when that friend is Trev. Trev, who brought her to her wedding. Trev, who loans her books and teases her about poetry and always has a smile when he sees her. Who kissed her cheek after his bronc ride. Whose eyes twinkled when he looked at Philippe. Someone attacked Trev? Someone tried to kill Trev? Not a chance was she going to be able to sleep.

Not a chance was she going to even try.

And so she has found herself here, sitting at a table beside Philippe, whose face is grey and who still has blood on his trembling good hand. She tried to convince him to wash it off, but he just shook his head and didn’t say a word.

It is the first time she has been in the house he shares with Trev and Raoul, but all kitchens are much the same. It was no trouble to find her way around it, and make coffee for him. And he gave her what almost might be a faint smile as she set it beside his good hand, but he’s made no move to touch it.

She wishes there was something she could say, something to relieve the heaviness in his eyes, but she knows even less about what happened than he does, and it aches to think that this is all she can do, just sit here silently beside him, and make him coffee that he’s not going to drink.

(There was something about a noose, something about a knife, a whisper of broken bones, but she doesn’t want to pry, not with how white Philippe’s knuckles are, his clenched fist.)  
Gently, she lays her hand on top of his. It is a silent affirmation when he leans a little closer to her.

There was, for a time, terrible coughing from the room where Trev is, but it is quiet now.  
She almost thinks she preferred the coughing.

Raoul comes out, at one point, for more hot water, and gives her a tired smile as it boils before he squeezes his older brother’s shoulder. Philippe doesn’t look up at him.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Raoul’s voice is soft when he bows his head. “He’s going to be all right. His lungs have stopped bleeding.”

Philippe closes his eyes, and his nod is barely perceptible, but Raoul meets Christine’s gaze, and his lips twitch into a tired smile.

He disappears back into the room after, where the doctor is attending Trev, and as she sits and listens to the clock ticking, feeling the warmth of Philippe’s hand beneath hers, it’s Erik her thoughts wander to. Erik, who looked so handsome tonight. Erik, who, really, for a moment, looked as if he would kiss her (and she would have let him). Erik, who was still wearing his clothes from the Ball when he looked in on Trev and the doctor, and in a hushed voice asked questions before rushing out the door, telling her to stay here until he came back. But there has been no sign of him since, and the longer she sits the more her stomach clenches, wondering, worrying. If someone attacked Trev, if someone tried to kill Trev (and there did, dear God but someone did) then how can she know Erik is any more safe?

Someone already attacked him, struck him on the head and left him bleeding and delirious. There is no way she can know he is safe, no way she can be sure of it, and every night he is out there he is in danger. What if something happens to him? What if the next time someone tries to kill him, they succeed?

Her free hand clenches in her lap, breaths coming short. She can’t think like that, she can’t. Erik can’t get killed. It’s wrong. It’s impossible.

(It’s possible, too possible.)

“I’m sorry,” Philippe’s voice is hoarse, jolts her out of her thoughts.

It takes her a minute to find her voice. “What for?”

He turns his hand, slowly, carefully, beneath hers, and links their fingers together. She brushes her thumb over his skin, so much softer than she expected it might be. “Being such a poor host.”

“It’s all right.” It is, really. He loves Trev. She knows that. He loves him in the same way the boys in the opera loved each other, in the way Firmin and Moncharmin loved each other, the way that people whisper is wrong but it makes Sorelli smile, and nobody ever said anything about the kind of brief love she shared with Sorelli before they decided friendship was best, but it could hardly be any less wrong in the eyes of those same people. And if anything were to happen to Sorelli—

If Trev doesn’t survive—

But he will. Raoul said he will. Trev will survive, and he and Philippe will continue to love each other in their way, and Erik will continue to not be attacked because he cannot be, she will not stand for it, she will not see him as weak as that again, so help her God. And does that mean she loves Erik? Loves him in the same way she once loved Sorelli?

Could she?

“All that matters,” she whispers, “is that he’ll be well again.”

Philippe swallows. “Thank God for that.”

* * *

The doctor comes out a little later, and she helps Philippe to his feet. The man’s eyes flick between the two of them, and for a moment she wonders how much he knows and how much he merely suspects and how much has been silently confirmed for him tonight with the look on Philippe’s face, but all he says is, “Trevelyan needs to rest, but you may see him,” and Raoul looks to Philippe and says, “He’s asking for you” before he sees the doctor to the door.

Philippe lurches towards the bedroom door so fast he almost falls, but she steadies him with her hand on his arm and presses his cane into his good hand. He smiles weakly at her, and kisses her cheek, then disappears behind the door.

The tiredness weighs heavy in her bones, and again she wonders how Erik might be. Has he found the one who did this? Or is he on his way back here even now for her?

She does not realize Raoul has come back until she feels his hand light on her arm, and his eyes are soft as she turns to him.

“Thank you for staying with him,” he whispers, and she smiles weakly.

“It was my pleasure.”

* * *

Dawn has not long broken, and she is dozing lightly on the sofa, when Aman comes. He is tired, blood still staining the cuffs of his sleeves (and her heart lurches to realize that it must be Trev’s blood, that it could hardly be anyone else’s), and when he settles in a chair at the kitchen table she makes him coffee, and gives him time.

If there is anything she has learned about Erik’s friends, it’s that they will talk when they are ready.

He thanks her for the coffee, and she sits across from him with her own, and waits.  
She does not have to wait too long.

“Erik will be along shortly,” and his words are a relief. She settles easier into the chair, knowing that he must mean Erik is safe.

“Did he find who did it? Or any sign?” She hopes they have, hopes the man or men responsible are locked up and can cause no more harm, but hardly has she asked when Aman shakes his head.

“Nothing. We’ll ask Trev when he’s rested if maybe he knows, but it was very dark. He’s always been a little farsighted.”

* * *

She sat with them, for a little while, after Raoul left to find Erik. Philippe’s good hand was curled around Trev’s, Trev’s fingers so still and pale lying beside him. The bed linens were pulled up to his shoulders, but she knew from what Raoul said that he must be swaddled with bandages beneath, bandages to match the one around his throat. (A noose around his neck, Trev pulled back into an alley and his throat didn’t bleed but the skin is rubbed raw, and they kicked him hard in the chest until he coughed blood, cracked two ribs and bruised his lungs, his left cheek purple and a cut on his chin, and they didn’t stab him, not truly, but they tore his clothes open and slashed him, his arms and his chest and his belly, and that was how two drunk cowhands found him, followed the sound of someone gagging, but his attackers were gone and one cowhand stayed with him while the other ran and found Raoul, and it was only after Raoul got there with Aman that Trev passed out.) So many bandages, so much damage, and for what?

Why?

She couldn’t get her head around it, not sitting in there and not now across from Aman. She’s not sure she wants to. But Trev was unconscious with the pain and the blood loss and the laudanum (though he was awake for a very little while), his face grey on the pillow where it isn’t red or purple, and tears trickled down Philippe’s cheeks.

There was nothing she could say that would be any comfort. How could words be any comfort in the face of that?

(She squeezed his shoulder, and leaned closer to him. Aman meets her gaze, now, and his eyes are bloodshot, as if he, too, has cried before coming here.)

* * *

Aman finishes his coffee, speaks to Philippe for only a moment, and takes his leave, looking more troubled than ever. And it is not long after that when Erik comes back for her at last.

It is no surprise that Erik looks so drawn and tired (not after what Aman told her), still in his grey suit though it’s marred now with dust, his cravat loosened. His dishevelment stirs something inside her, an ache to take him home and put him to bed, in spite of her own tiredness. To make him comfortable and brush out his suit and tell him there is no need to worry, that everything will be fine, even as, deep down, she fears there might be every reason to worry.

“Trev will be all right,” she whispers, and squeezes his hand. There is still the threat of infection, the risk of fresh bleeding, and sitting with him, squeezing his fingers when he half-woke, murmuring to ease his mumbling, those twin questions seemed too great to allow herself to contemplate.

He looked so young in his paleness, as young as Raoul (even as Philippe looked old and worn for worrying over him), all his bravado fallen away, his dark hair dishevelled and sticking to his forehead with the sweat of pain, as if he were little more than a boy though she knows he is older than her, older even than Sorelli, and she ached to keep him safe with some of the same tenderness that throbs in her now to take care of Erik, if he would let her.

Erik squeezes her hand back, and gently disentangles their fingers. “Thank God.”

* * *

He looks in on Trev, only briefly, and they take their leave. Neither of them speak on the short walk home, her arm tucked through Erik’s, such a difference to the way they raced to Trev and Philippe’s only a handful of hours ago, though it feels like a lifetime, as if the Ball happened in another world to somebody else, another couple, and maybe that is why, as they close the house door behind them on the hazy blue sky of early morning, that she says it.

Or maybe it is simply that she is tired. Tired to her bones. Tired after the Fourth of July and after the Ball and after worrying so much for so long. Tired of not knowing how to feel, of how to act, of what she should think. Tired of a husband who looks as if he might kiss her one minute and then puts as much distance as possible between them the next. Who has almost been killed, twice, in the few weeks their marriage has existed.

She is not sure she has ever felt so tired.

Whatever the reason, she asks it, the question that has twisted through her mind all evening.

“What if it was you?”

Her voice is small even to her own ears, and he turns to face her, the half of his brow that she can see furrowed.

“What do you mean?”

Isn’t it obvious what she means? They’re after coming from the side of a man, their friend!, who has been badly injured. She has sat up all night with his lover, trying to offer what comfort she could without useless words. Trev could have, would have!, died if some of those wounds had been a little deeper, inflicted with a little more force, if that noose had been pulled tighter. How can Erik not see what she means?

“What if you were killed?”

He blinks, and blinks again, hand stretching towards her for the briefest moment before it falls back to his side. “I—You would be looked after.” His voice is low, as if he is afraid of startling her. “I’ve seen to that. It’s in my will. Everything I have would be yours.”

That’s not what she means. What use would she have for things if her husband was dead? Her husband who barely touches her and never as a husband is supposed to want to. Does he not—is she just one more thing to him? Like his piano? Like his mask? That mask. Hiding her husband’s face from her even now and she knows what lies beneath, has seen it, has kissed it even if he doesn’t remember. She doesn’t care about that. How can she care about that in the face of the rest of him? And how good he’s been to her? And all of the things he’s given her? Yes it’s not ideal but he is so much more than his face!

“You’ve given me enough things, Erik.” I want you, I want you to touch me, to hold me, to kiss me, and she would say that, she would, but her voice catches. “I need more than things.”

And suddenly, it seems to dawn on him what she means. His eyes widen, and he gapes, only for a moment, before he swallows and his face smooths. “Hell if something happened to me you could marry De Chagny Junior. He’d give you all you could want. You could sell everything of mine.”

He’s the single most frustrating man! How can someone be so intelligent, read books in their original Greek and Latin, and still be so dense? It’s infuriating!

“I don’t want Raoul, Erik. I want you!”

“You can’t.” His voice is so faint she almost doesn’t hear it. “You’re not supposed to. The arrangement—”

“The arrangement can hang!” She can see it now at last. “It’s you that I want.”

“No.”

A single word, barely a breath, and it cuts her to the core. All at once, her fears are confirmed. He doesn’t want her. Not as a woman, not as a wife. Just as a thing. Another pretty thing, and tears well in her eyes. So that’s what she is to him. Another thing to be disposed of as he sees fit. To write into his will and give someone. And she was just beginning to think he might be different, think that he might like her, might want her.

But all she is to him is another possession.

Tears burning in her eyes, no sense of where she will go or what she will do, she opens the door behind her, and walks back into the street.

The thud of the door closing echoes in her brain.

 


	13. Morning

How long he stands there, staring at the door she left through, he has no idea. The headache throbs behind his eyes, leaves his eyelids like sandpaper, and all he can think is, she’s gone. She left him.

She left.

And he’s not even quite sure why. All he said was the truth. He has re-written his will, left everything to her. He would have no problem if she re-married, why would he object to that? And Raoul De Chagny is as good a man as any. A good deal better than most, if he is being honest. She would be looked after. She might even be happy. (She said that she wants him. How could she want him?)

But she looked at him as if he is the greatest fool in the world.

Maybe he is. He has never been around a woman long enough to claim to know what they might want. Has never been around a woman long enough to even begin to think about it. 

He should have known he’d ruin the whole thing.

So why does he feel so terrible? Why does it feel like she ripped a hole in him as she walked out the door? Where has all the air gone? Why does his chest feel so heavy?

Oh, God. What if she gets hurt? What if someone attacks her? Woods! Woods attacked Trev, or had someone do it! (And if he could get his hands on him now for that alone— But there’s no proof, there’s no goddamn proof.) And of course it was Woods who had him clocked on the head! And who had Darius’ bridle sabotaged! What if he goes for Christine? She’s his wife. It doesn’t matter how they found each other. Woods will see her as an ideal target to get to him, to take him out of the running. If he threatens Christine, if he hurts her—

It’ll be his fault. He drove her to walking out. He brought her out here. If a single hair is harmed on her head he is the one who carries the blame for it.

He’s in the street almost before he knows it, the morning heat coming up slow, the distant mountains hazy. He has to find her, has to stop her. Where would she have gone? Beth! But she doesn’t know where Beth lives, that he knows of. Back to see Trev! She seemed upset about what’s happened to him. Mrs Valerius? Would she go to the old woman? Maybe. They like each other. It’s as good a place as any to start.

He needs to check on Ayesha and the foal anyway. The dark bay filly foal he was going to gift to Christine, to name and someday be hers. And now Christine has left. She’s left. She’s really left.

There are tears in his eyes. Why are there tears in his eyes?

He wipes them away roughly, before anyone can see. Not that there are many people in the streets. The day is still too new, that time between the exodus from the saloons and the start of work, and if they see him as he is now, surely dishevelled, still dressed for the ball, they’ll assume he was working all night, assume he was investigating what happened to Trev.

(He should check on him again, should see how he is now, damaged ribs are awful he knows that, but Trev was asleep when he last saw him and he doesn’t want to wake him.)

It’s close enough to the truth.

He could go around to the back of Mrs Valerius’ house, and check the horses in the paddock, but he needs to know about Christine, needs to know if she came here.

The house is still, no sign of movement, drapes still pulled from the night. The old woman might not be up yet. It’s very early. He chances a knock on the door, but there is no answer. Knocks again and still no answer. It’s a lost cause here, it must be. Christine must have gone to Trev.

He peeps around the edge of the house, but mare and foal are equally content, mare grazing, foal lying out asleep in the grass.

At least something is as it should be.

A crack, loud and clear. His head whips around. A shot, that was a shot. Where? Further in town. Christine. What if it was Christine?

He’s running, legs burning and heart pounding, blood rushing in his ears. Another shot, same direction, and another, towards the saloons, the Desdemone. What if Christine got lost? Or what if someone forced her? What if someone tried to force her?

He’s going to be sick.

The world spins and he’s flat on his back, street whirling around him grey and brown and blue as his chest heaves and the dust settles and Aman, Aman’s face is over him, brows furrowed.

“Where are you rushing to?” His hand tightens around Erik’s, pulls, and, stumbling, Erik gets to his feet, and grabs Aman’s arm to steady himself, head throbbing so bad his eyes water.

Oh Lord not one of these headaches. Not now.

“The shooting…”

Aman snorts. “Just Old Man Carter firing on some birds. Max already has him for disturbing the peace and carrying a gun in town. He’s arguing that it wasn’t in town because it was out his room window, but it’s still disturbing—hey!”

Erik’s legs give out beneath him and as he grasps to catch himself he almost pulls Aman down too, pain lancing behind his eyes so sharp he can’t see, only the slightest slit of light. His stomach heaves and he gags and chokes but all that comes up is acid burning his throat and Aman’s hands are on his shoulders, keeping him from falling over. For a moment he thinks he’s about to anyway, just fold over and cash in, but it wasn’t Christine they were shooting. It wasn’t Christine.

Aman is whispering in his ear. “…head…need…bed…”

No! He can’t go to bed. He has to find Christine, has to make sure she’s safe even if she never wants to see him again and if she’s dead if she’s dead—

“She left.” Aman needs to know, Aman needs to understand and his own voice is far away as his vision swims back hazy, Aman’s face blurring at the edges.

“What?”

“Christine.”

He’s back on his feet, leaning heavy on Aman, Aman’s arm around his waist. “Christine left?”

“Have to find her.” They’re walking, he’s stumbling, eyes screwed shut as Aman leads him, balances him.

“You rest. I’ll find her. All right?”

He trusts Aman more than…more than anyone else in the world, has for more years than he’s quite able to count, and he nods and lurches. Aman’s arm grips him tighter. “All right.”

* * *

  
She has been reading the same sentence for five minutes now but each time she gets to the end the meaning of it slips through her fingers again and it all seems like so much useless words. She shouldn’t have left, she knows that, but her feelings got the better of her and now she can’t go back without looking like a fool.

No. Erik will have to find her himself.

Trev has been quiet, painfully so. There is laudanum for him to take, to ease the pain of his wounds, but when she offered him some he shook his head, jaw clenched tight. “I want my faculties clear,” and even through the terrible rasp his voice has taken on from the noose, he clipped the words so clear she could hear his accent sharpen.

England. Erik says Trev is English, that he left home when he was sixteen when he “decided the life of a lord did not suit him.” It’s almost laughable, to think of Trev, who sings badly and compliments her cooking and rides unbroken horses for fun (was that only two days ago? It feels like a year since the Fourth of July) as being something of a lord.

The thought of Erik stabs her heart.

She insisted Philippe get some sleep, and before he retreated to Raoul’s room he smiled at her and thanked her for staying with Roddy, and her feelings are such a tangled mess of Erik, of having walked out on him, that it took a minute for her to remember that Roddy is short for Roderick, and Roderick is Trev’s actual first name.

Only Philippe calls him Roddy. (Would Erik call her Chrissy?)

Sorelli would make much of that.

If only Sorelli were here. She would know what to do about Erik, know what to say to him, know whether or not to go back to him and how long to stay away. She knows all about men, made it her business to decipher them even when it wasn’t critical to her business. Sorelli would hug her, would tell her that men are nothing more than difficult fools, even the best of them, even the ones who would see to her pleasures. Would tell her that it is frequently necessary to take them in hand and just tell them what she wants because “they’re too caught up in their own things to figure it out themselves.”

What does she want from Erik?

To kiss him? To hold him? It might be nice, either of them. To share his bed like any normal wife? To—to do those other things? Maybe, a bit. It might not be so bad.

To have a husband, she supposes, is what she wants. Someone who might take her to dinner and take her dancing and tell her things. To have nights like those scant evenings they shared at the piano, when he played his compositions for her and told her that he is trying to set Byron’s poetry to music. To have more, just something more than what she has, more than a man who has given her a room in his house and none in his heart.

She should find Beth. Beth might have some advice for her. Or Mrs Valerius. She’s widowed, so she had a husband once and they must have made it work.

“Ah, there you are.” The voice behind her startles her from her thoughts and she jumps, dropping the book. Trev huffs what might almost be a laugh from the bed, and she glances at him before she turns around.

And finds Aman in the doorway, his hat in his hand.

“Erik told me what happened.” His voice is gentle, and for a moment his eyes flicker to Trev before coming back to her. “He’s sorry for what he said.”

Fingers brush her hand and she looks down, finds Trev looking back at her with heavy eyes, and he squeezes her fingers. His voice is weak when he looks to Aman. “Why did he not come himself?”

Aman sighs, and for a moment looks as if he wishes he could be anywhere else than here. “The doctor wouldn’t let him.”

Doctor? She’s on her feet in an instant, Trev’s fingers slipping from hers. “What happened? Is he all right? Is he hurt?” If something happened, if those shots were someone shooting at Erik—Oh God she knew he’d get himself killed, she knew it.

“Let me finish.” Aman’s hands are gentle guiding her back down into the chair, and she grasps blindly for Trev’s hand, squeezes it when she finds it. “He’s in bed. It’s one of his headaches. A bad one, but he’ll be all right. He’s just overstrained himself.” And unspoken, unneeded, is the, it’s been a busy few days.

Just a headache, albeit a bad one. She puts her head in her hands and thanks God for keeping him safe.

If he died before she got a chance to say anything to him, to tell him how she feels, she would never forgive herself. How could she ever forgive herself?

The voices are low around her. “…those shots?” “Old Man Carter…” But all that matters is that Erik will be well. It’s just a headache. Just a bad headache.

She opens her eyes, and smiles up at Aman. He looks tired, so terribly tired, but they’re all tired now. “Thank you for telling me.”

He gives her a faint smile in return, and his voice is kind. “You don’t have to see him yet, if you don’t want to. But just think about it, in a little while. When he’s had time to rest. Will you?”

“I will.” Think about it she can do, even if she doesn’t know what to do.

“I’ll be back later.” And with a nod to both of them, Aman fixes his hat back on and walks out, closes the door behind him.

She smooths the creases from her dress, and reaches back down for her book, fixing it in her lap, not that she’s sure she’ll be able to read. She has just found her page, ready to try again, when Trev’s voice interrupts her, and she looks at him, and his half-closed eyes and pale face, head heavy on the pillow.

“He’s very like Philippe.” His voice is still terribly hoarse, and he swallows, grimaces, and she is all too aware of the bandage around his throat. “Erik feels more than he—more than he knows how to feel.”

It’s the single most nonsensical thing she has ever heard, and she stares back at him, trying to fathom what he might mean when he smiles, eyes closing. “Tell me, how are you finding Virgil?”

* * *

  
He sleeps, mostly, and it is late evening when he is disturbed again, by Aman bringing him broth and weak tea. The headache has mostly abated, but he doesn’t trust his stomach to tolerate much, even knowing that Christine is safe from Aman’s update early in the day. He has every faith that at the first inkling of trouble Trev will insist on rising from his bed for his guns. The man is as reliable as Aman and Philippe, even if he is ten times as infuriating.  
And De Chagny Junior will not be far away, not when Trev is injured, and there is any risk of his brother needing protection.

He could never ask for better men than the ones he has.

“She’ll be back to you,” Aman’s voice is confident, soft as it is as he checks the curtains are not letting in too much light (they’re not, Erik has always favoured heavy curtains in his room). “Possibly sooner than either of us think.”

“But what does she want?” He has told Aman what she said, I don’t want things, Erik. But what could she want? What could he possibly give her?

Aman sighs as he settles into the chair by the bed. “I imagine she wants what any girl wants. A husband. Children. A nice house. To not be lonely. Someone to talk to.”

“But why would she want that with me?” It’s easy enough to imagine what a girl might want, but why would any girl want that with him of all people? Certainly one as innocent and gentle and quiet as Christine? How could any girl as lovely as her possibly want him?

His heart kicks in his chest at the possibility that she even might.

Aman massages his temples before looking at him, weary as his hand falls away. “Because she likes you. Because you married her. Clearly she has come to care.” He purses his lips, and his eyes meet Erik’s, a brighter green than Erik can ever remember seeing them. “And, my friend, I suspect she is not the only one.”


	14. Admissions

Night has already fallen when Max and Beth walk her home. She waited as long as she could bear without seeing Erik, trying to think what she might say to him, what she should do, what he might say to her.

Whether he will order her to leave.

It was almost nice, sitting beside Trev. He told her whispered stories to take her mind off things, though she protested he should be resting. He insisted telling stories was resting, and that really it was keeping him from going mad, and whether it was true or not or whether he just didn’t care about maybe damaging his throat more, she didn’t argue with him. Arguing would only make him dig his heels in more. Philippe sat with them, lying back in his chair, bad leg stretched before him, though he mostly let Trev talk. And in spite of everything, of her own uncertainty, it warmed her inside to see his soft smile.

She did her best to keep her attention from wandering, to pay attention to Trev and take in all that he said. His whispered tale of growing up in London, of running away, of trailing cattle to Kansas. How he met Philippe in a saloon in Albuquerque, and saved him from getting murdered by a group of disgruntled cowhands by pressing his gun to the ringleader’s head. (Philippe took issue with the story, insisting he had the whole thing under control, that he was just waiting for his moment to grab the gun and turn it on his attempted attackers, but she could see the mischief in his eyes, and knew his version was only half the truth.) He tells her how he first met Erik in Prescott, though Erik was not quite well at the time, and from his tone and the purse of his lips she suspects that Erik might either have been drunk or under the influence of opium at the time, though the thought of her stalwart husband over imbibing is almost ludicrous when the man won’t even touch her.

She hears, too, in a faint voice, of the night Philippe was attacked (and Philippe looks away, out the window, before excusing himself to make coffee, though she insists she can do it instead, that there is no need to dwell on what happened. But he gives her a sad smile, and squeezes her hand, and says it is best she know.) So she hears the halting details of his being shot twice by a drunk in the street, of him firing back as he collapsed, of the doctor saving his arm by removing a section of bone from it though he had wanted to take most of the arm itself, to cut it somewhere above the elbow. How Philippe is lucky to be able to walk as well as he can, after his hip was very nearly shattered, and how he nearly died, with the bleeding and re-bleeding and the infections that set in. She ached to reach out, to wipe the glistening tears from Trev’s eyes, but her fingers refused to move and all she could do was squeeze his hand, her throat tight, and think, selfishly, thank God it was not Erik, thank God Erik was not left in such a state.

(When Philippe comes back, coffee for all three of them carefully balanced on a tray supported by his good hand, she hugs him, and doesn’t say a word, and his hand is warm on her back.)

For the first and only time since it happened, she tells someone about Sorelli. Of how they loved each other, of all that they were, even if only for a short time. And Trev’s eyes were closed when she finished, but she knew he wasn’t asleep with the way his fingers squeezed hers, and his lips twitched into a faint smile, as if he might almost say, we understand. Philippe reached across the bed, and squeezed her arm, and his nod was an affirmation that what had been once had mattered, and mattered still in some way, even if it was past now.

If there were tears in her eyes, neither of them mentioned it.

She took her leave from them soon after, when Max and Beth dropped in to see them, not wanting to intrude any more than she already has when Trev is supposed to be resting, though Philippe offered her Raoul’s room for the night, and said his brother would sleep on the sofa if she wished to stay.

And she might have taken that offer, maybe, but she wouldn’t be able to sleep for thinking of Erik, and wondering. She has to face him now, to face her husband and tell him that what she wants is a marriage in practical terms, and not simply one in name only. She is ill at the thought of it, nausea tight in her stomach. What if the reason that he has kept his distance is that he is repulsed by her? What if he decides she is better off leaving? How could she go back to Sorelli with that failure hanging over her head?

No. She could never do it. She would have to go to Cheyenne and seek out work in the brothels. It would be the only way, and her heart cracks at the thought. The very thing she has tried desperately to avoid, and Erik, the man she has—has come to love (if love is the right word, if it is not too strong), might ask it of her.

It is unthinkable.

So she doesn’t think on it, not actively. But it dwells in the back of her mind, and makes it so difficult to force a smile for Beth as they part.

The house is quiet, and Aman is in the marshal’s office again tonight, so there is someone there if something should go wrong, with Raoul ready to back him up. So it is only her and Erik in the house, and Erik is surely still in bed.

The last time she spoke to Aman, shortly before Max and Beth arrived, he told her that Erik’s head was much better, and that, if she wished to visit him, she should. She lingers, now, outside her husband’s door, wondering if he is asleep, or lying awake in the darkness, or possibly, maybe, thinking of her. Should she disturb him, or wait until morning?

If she is to leave, she would prefer to know as soon as possible, and not merely delay the knowledge.

She sighs, and slips into her own room instead. It is the work of minutes to cast aside the dress she has worn for nearly a day and a half now, that she wore to the ball (was it only last night?), and replace it with a soft old cotton one that she brought from New Orleans. It is better to be comfortable, if she is to be faced with difficult news. She pulls the dressing gown over it, for an extra layer of security, and then steps back into the hall, and knocks lightly on Erik’s door. Let the choice be his, whether or not they are to talk tonight.  
He calls a faint “come in”, muffled through the wooden door, and, heart in her throat, she opens it slowly, and steps inside.

The room is lit only by a gas lamp on the bedside locker, and it gives his skin a golden cast that makes something throb inside of her, a desire to be closer to him (to hold him). At the sight of her, he sets aside his book and reaches for his mask, but she is already beside him, and she curls her hands around his wrist (a wrist that looks so fragile, in the low light, though she knows that thin as it is it is strong and thickened with muscle) to still him.

“I wish to see you,” she whispers, “properly.”

His lips twist, but he does not speak. “All right.” His voice is fainter than she is used to, hoarse, and she sinks into the chair by the bed, eyes riveted on his face, even as her fingers slip and twine with his. They are cool and still, as if he might be afraid of startling her. It is only the good half of his face that is properly lit, but she must admit what she thought back then, when she first saw his portrait. It is a good face, would be a handsome face if it were not for his deformity, but the shock of his twisted features and those torn lines wore off her when he was attacked and Aman removed his mask for to tend to him, and softly she asks him to look at her.

He closes his eyes, only for the briefest moment, before opening them again and nodding, ever so slightly. And his face, when he turns to her, is not so very terrible. The skin of his damaged cheek is torn and twisted, true, fissured and cracked, but she looks at it and thinks that it is almost artistic, as if someone took a wax figure and scored and tried to melt it, and if he looks like this, well, it can surely only be as God intended. Who is she to argue with that? And Aman says it does not pain him. That’s good. It would be terrible if he suffered from it, had suffered from it all his life.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, squeezing his hand, and he inhales sharply, eyes flicking downwards, refusing to meet hers, but how she wants them to. She wants them to so badly.

“I’m sorry for running out on you, for worrying you.”

“I—” and his voice dies, whatever he was about to say lost when she brushes her fingers over that twisted skin, lightly, as lightly as she can, and he squeezes his eyes closed tight.

“Please,” and it is little more than a whimper.

“Erik,” his name is a whisper on her tongue, “look at me, please.”

He swallows, and his eyes flicker open, and at last, at last, meet hers. She gazes into them, their golden depths, glowing in the low lamplight, the hazel and flecks of moss green all but absorbed into the gold. They’re beautiful eyes, as beautiful as if they were conceived by an artist and painted on a canvas. How has she never noticed just how beautiful his eyes are before? And she hopes he can see all that she cannot put into words, all that she feels, how very much she wants him, well and happy, the things she has only begun to realise and cannot yet frame, cannot hope to name.

Can his eyes read hers? Can he bring himself to try?

“Erik,” she breathes his name as solemnly as if it were a prayer, “I don’t want you to die. Not ever. I don’t want to marry anyone else after you.”

Is it enough? To simply say that? She hopes it is, hopes she does not have to grasp for more words, to settle on something else to say. To come out with—to come out with it all, now, would be too much, too much for her and too much for him, might only be to their detriment. And just as she begins to think that she might have to reach for something else, he nods, ever so slightly, a single tear trickling down his bad cheek.

She smooths it away with her thumb.

“I don’t want you to have to marry anyone else.” His voice is so hoarse, thickened now with tears, and her heart throbs, aches for one more thing, in this moment, just one thing.

“May I kiss you?” she whispers, and slowly, ever so slowly, he nods.

His lips, beneath hers, are soft, and when she traces them gently with her tongue they part, and his arm comes around her, and slowly, gently, pulls her close.

She goes, willing and ready.

* * *

They kiss, and part, and whisper of things of which neither of them have spoken. And they kiss again, each kiss a little bolder, a little deeper, his tongue soft against hers. Once she opens her eyes, to see how he looks in this moment, desperate to capture it, to hold it and keep it close to her always, and his beautiful eyes are closed, tear drops glistening trapped against his lashes, and she breaks their kiss, and draws him closer, and kisses his closed eyelids softly, carefully, tasting the salt and water of his tears, as her own slip to join them.

They lie together, nestled on his bed that is not quite big enough for two people, and the warmth of him beside her soothes some of the aching in her heart, and the weight of her in his arms eases the fear throbbing in his. And pressed together, they talk quietly, late into the night. Of simple things, and complicated things, and their pasts. She tells him how she was so frightened to come out here, because of what happened to Tom. And he tells her that he was frightened too of asking her, frightened she might hate him, might be repulsed by him and leave as soon as she came. He warns her that his deformity is not limited to his face, that his body is scarred and torn, from shrapnel during the war and knifefights and bullets, and birth. And she tells him she does not care, that the scars and the fissures are all a part of him, that all his scars mean is that he survived, that he is here, now, beside her.

And she tells him he can hold her as tight as he wants, and his hesitancy dies away when she kisses him again, on his bad cheek, and the corner of his mouth, and nuzzles into the crook of his shoulder.

“I thought I was dreaming,” he whispers, ready, now, to ask her the question that has lingered in the back of his mind for weeks, “after I was hit on the head, when I felt kisses on my cheek. But that was you, truly, wasn’t it?”

She nods against him, and kisses him again. “I would kiss you a hundred times,” she whispers, and knows deep down it is true, and she would kiss him a hundred times more, “every day if you wished it, if you wanted it. This is as real, Erik,” she loves the feeling of his name on her tongue, as if it is a blessing bestowed upon her to be able to speak it in this soft way, “as real as you and I are. We have no dream we can wake from.”

He cries, again, and she kisses the tears away, and cries a little too. And they kiss some more, and hold each other, and through his shirt she can feel the ridges of the scars he spoke of, and she presses herself closer to him, and listens to his heart, and feels safer than she has in all the weeks since she left Sorelli’s arms, and at last, the sun peeking over the horizon, they sleep.


	15. Changes

 It is almost impossible to remember, that there was ever a time before this, before this easy contentment, this satisfaction that has taken root deep in his chest. He never realised before how tight he was inside, how hollow, until now when he feels so full up of so many feelings, and yet light. As if he could smile for days.

(It has been two days, and he has barely stopped smiling. He smiled at Old Man Carter, who looked as if he had seen a ghost, and at Judge Brown who was mildly concerned, and even at the lesser of his two rivals, Johnny Rogerson, running on an independent ticket as if it might get him anywhere, and Rogerson looked faintly perturbed.)

He wakes, this second morning, to Christine curled in a ball against him, still wearing her dressing gown over a soft cotton dress, and for a long time he lies there, watching the minute shiftings of her face, her soft snuffles, listening to each gentle breath. She is so beautiful, so delicate. How is it that someone as precious as this could care so much for someone like him?

He doesn’t have the words to describe what a wonderful, miraculous thing this is.

Carefully, slowly, so as not to wake her, he reaches out and brushes a lock of hair out of her eyes. Her eyelids stir, just slightly, but do not open, and he bows his head and kisses her, lightly, on the forehead.

It feels like such a liberty, though she told him he can kiss her any time he wants.

The thoughts of her, ready to smile at him and brush his face with her fingertips, and give him those sweet, gentle kisses (no insistence, no pressure, but the taste of her and what it means, that she _cares_ for him, she cares for him) those thoughts follow him through the day, as he dresses and dines and makes his rounds of the saloons and gambling halls and the dance hall where Max’s Beth gave him a warning look yesterday, but today she smiles at him and he remembers Christine visiting with her in the evening, while he and Max shared cigars. The thoughts, sweet as they are, stay with him as he visits Ayesha and her foal that he has still, officially, to gift to Christine, and when he checks on the Khanum. And they linger as he drops in on Philippe and Trev. And neither of those were happy with him yesterday. Philippe’s mouth was a hard line beneath his moustache, and Trev glared at him, half his face a purpled bruise and the bandage taken off his throat to reveal more bruised skin and scraped red rawness, until he told them that all is well, that he and Christine have spoken, and he has apologized for his behavior towards her, and they have agreed to start again, properly, as husband and wife.

“We’re going to make it work,” he said, and Philippe nodded, even as Trev lay back on his pillows with a fierce expression.

“I know I’m not supposed to move,” and he was still hoarse, still ghastly pale beneath the bruises, but there was a fire burning in his blue eyes that warned Erik to be careful, “but if you upset that girl again, so help me I’ll leave this bed and I’ll—”

“It won’t happen again.” He couldn’t promise that, can never promise it, not truly. He is bound to say or do something sooner or later that will upset her, but he can promise that it will not be talk of his death, no matter how likely it might be.

“Good.” Trev’s nod was emphatic, and then his expression softened and he smiled. “How does it feel to be a changed man?”

Philippe, sitting beside him, snorted, and like that Erik had two of his dearest friends back.

(It was Aman he told first, that he has finally seen what a damn fool he was, and that he cares for Christine, and she cares for him. “She kissed me,” he whispered, and Aman squeezed his hand, smiling softly, and said, “Didn’t I tell you?”)

The news was slower to reach Raoul, him being busy sleeping off too many all-night shifts and too much strain, but when Erik saw him it was his fist he felt first, connecting with his jaw, followed by the words, “It’s the least of what you deserve for upsetting her.” And it was such a shock, for mild-mannered Raoul to punch him, that for long minutes he could only stare as he rubbed his aching jaw, and try to form the words that everything is all right now.

(Raoul shook his hand then, afterwards, and his congratulations were edged with contrition. The jaw is only slightly bruised, hardly noticeable, but Christine kissed it when she saw it and another rush of affection ran through him.)

When, at last, he gets home, and it is such a relief to be home again on this second day, Christine tells him that her lunch went well with the ranchers’ wives, the lunch that was arranged at the Ball as her “introduction into society”, and her smile is devious when she says, “They think I was a legitimate widow before we met.”

So much the better, and he smiles back at her. A widow is far and away more suited to the public eye than a girl from a catalogue, even if they are the same girl. And he knows it hurt her terribly, what happened in Leadville, but with every breath since that kiss he cannot help but be thankful that it did happen, and Tom her husband-to-be died before she got there.

She steps into his arms, and kisses his cheek. But a kiss on the cheek is not enough now, not when he has tasted her and held her breath in his mouth, and he tilts his head, and brushes her lips softly with his. Her fingers caress his neck, and her mouth opens, and this is what he has dreamt of, since the moment he left her asleep in his bed.

* * *

 

On the third day of what she thinks of now as a whole new life, with a husband who cares for her and welcomes her into his arms and his bed (and, usually, his arms in his bed, where they lie close and kiss and whisper in the darkness, though he has not pushed for his marital rights and she does not consider it proper to ask for them, so she is content to simply lie next to him and feel his soft lips press light kiss next to light kiss in a line across her forehead), on the third day when, in the Bible, God was creating land and sea, Erik comes home to her in the late morning, after spending the later half of the night in his office and on patrol.

She missed the feel of him beside her in bed with an ache so desperate she could feel it in her bones.

He comes home, and smiles at her, the smile she loves, that makes her heart stir, that until a few days ago she never saw at all but now is the single most wonderful sight in the world.

“I’m going to lie down for a little while,” and his words carry a slight invitation, if she wishes to join him, and she does. She has no appointments today, no visit to Mrs Valerius or lunch with ranchers’ wives or reading with Beth who isn’t feeling quite well, and she was going to visit Trev and read to him for a while because he was complaining how hard it is to prop a book on his chest in a way that doesn’t upset his ribs, but that can wait until evening. Anything she might do can wait until evening, so she smiles back up at her husband (and where before there was dread at the word, and uncertainty, there is a new frisson of excitement), and stands, taking his hand.

“I think I might join you.”

His smile makes his eyes shine bright gold.

He leads her to his room, which has become as familiar, now, as her own, and when she settles on the edge of the bed he hangs his jacket on the back of the door and takes off his hat and his boots and gunbelt. For the barest moment his fingers hover over his mask, and then he takes that, too, off, and sets it on the nightstand beside the lamp.

She lies down on top of the covers, because it is far and away too warm of a day to slip under them, and he lies down next to her. His fingers are light skimming up her arm, fingering the lace at her throat, and she shivers involuntarily. Something flickers in his face, a contortion of pain gone in a blink, and before he can reconsider, before he can begin to think her shiver is a bad thing, she presses herself close and brings their lips together.

His kiss is still as sweet, still as hesitant as it has been every time, but she is bolder, she is ready, and she nips his bottom lip, persuades him to open his mouth to her. He sighs, and the shiver it sends through her is warm, and her heart stumbles as she presses yet closer, and his hand cradles the back of her head. She slips her tongue into his mouth, tastes the coffee he drank before he left his office, there in the ridges of his teeth, and his tongue tickles against hers, is light tracing her inner lip as she tilts her head and gets a better fit, goes a little deeper, his teeth a hard line pressed against her lip.

He shivers against her, gasps, and she strokes his neck, cups his chin as she nips his lip again before her fingers slip, ever so slowly, to his collar. The buttons are small, and her fingers fumble, but she opens the first one, and the second, traces the smooth line of his collarbone.

“Please, Erik,” she whispers, “I’ll keep my eyes closed.” He has scars, she knows, scars he is afraid of showing her. She has caught a glimpse of them, has gathered the fact of their existence from things he has said and Aman too, has felt them through his clothes, and his lips twist against hers now.

“All right.”

It is barely a breath but it is the permission she needs, and she pulls back, eyes still closed, and kisses the corner of his mouth, presses another kiss to the edge of that, and another, and another, in a trail down his chin, down his neck, the skin roughened from shaving, from weather, so warm beneath her lips, smelling of dry sweat and sandalwood smoke, and slowly, ever so slowly, she opens another button, and spreads his shirt, just a little, just enough for her to kiss the crook where his neck meets his shoulder, and his fingers are tangled in her hair as he whimpers and she kisses along the line of his collarbone, feels the ridge beneath the skin where there must once have been a break. Some day she will ask him the story of his scars, of his old wounds, but now is not that day and she licks the line of the ancient break, tastes the faint musk of him, and he mutters something that might be her name or might simply be _Christ_.

She smiles against him, and is just contemplating whether to open another button or two, and kiss his nipples in the way that Sorelli says makes a man cry out (and her own experience, such as it is at the tongue of Sorelli, is enough to make her squirm at the thought, how would Erik’s mouth feel on her breasts? His hands? Would he run his thumb lightly over her, just to make her shiver? She presses herself tighter to him, one of his legs pressing in between her own), when a rapping on the door makes her jump.

“Erik!” It’s Max’s voice, Max shouting, and Max doesn’t _shout_ , never, even she knows that.

They jump back, as if they have been caught doing something they shouldn’t have been when it is only something normal to other people, and she fixes the lace around her collar as she catches her breath, smooths down her hair while Erik fumbles with his buttons.

“Come in!” He’s hoarse still, tips of his ears burning red, and he doesn’t look at her as he reaches for his mask, and slips it into place.

The door swings open, and Max leans in, face pale, and it must be clear, what they were doing, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Darius is back alone,” and there’s a frantic note to his voice that makes her heart pound when she remembers that Aman spent the night at one of the ranches which is why Erik had to go to the office in the first place, and if Darius is alone then where is Aman? “He’s in a state. There’s blood on the saddle.”

“Blood?” Bile rises hot in her throat and she swallows it down, acid taste lingering in her mouth.

Erik is already pulling on his boots, reaching for his gunbelt. “Have the Khanum readied. Then have Raoul take Christine to Philippe.”

Max nods and pulls his head back out, lets the door bang shut, and Erik turns to her, his jaw tight and eyes fierce, long fingers nimble buckling his belt. His gaze softens, just slightly, as he looks at her. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and she nods, but of course he has to go. Of course he’s got to go.

“Be safe.” If something were to happen to him too, now, when they’ve only just—

Tears burn in her eyes, and she swallows as he bows his head, lips gentle against her forehead. Then he’s gone, and the door swings shut behind him, a chasm yawning open inside of her.

_Please, God, let him be safe. Let them both be safe. Please._


	16. Waiting

As soon as he hears the news, as soon as Raoul delivers Christine to their kitchen and departs again so Max will not be left alone in case of trouble (and Christine didn’t miss the hard resolve in Raoul’s face, the way he glanced at her as Erik rode out of town, and she prays that the image of Erik disappearing into the distance in a cloud of dust from the Khanum’s hooves will not be the last image she has of her husband), Trev insists on leaving his bed, against doctor’s orders as it is, and on being helped to dress. He manages his trousers himself, and Christine helps him with his shirt, easing it on over layers of bandages hiding stitches.

He is painfully stiff, and he winces when buttoning the shirt tugs on something

“My guns, Philippe,” and his voice leaves no room for argument.

“As soon as you’re in the parlour.” Philippe, too, is firm, and there is only the barest flicker of emotion across his face when Trev winces as she helps him to his feet.

It is three and half days since the attack on him, and though the red rawness of his neck has dried and scabbed over, his other wounds — and his ribs — are still fresh enough to cause him pain when he moves. Still he lets go of Christine’s hand, and shoos away Philippe when he tries to hover. “I’m not an invalid,” he mutters, and though she is tempted to make a remark about how he is not supposed to be out of bed either, Christine holds her tongue.

Sorelli always warned her about how proud men can be.

He makes it to the parlour, and at his request Christine moves an armchair so that it’s facing the door instead of the fireplace. He lowers himself into it slowly, and Philippe fixes a blanket around his shoulders as Christine turns her attention to making coffee.

“Stop fussing. You’re worse than a mother hen.” And if Trev’s voice is slightly strained, she tries not to hear it.

“I’ll fuss as much as I want to.” Philippe will brook no reproach, and in spite of the worry twisting in her stomach over Erik, she smiles to herself.

Water heating, she arranges a second armchair for Philippe and he smiles gratefully at her as he eases himself into it, accepting a revolver from Trev, who is loading a second one, two more sitting in his lap. She knows nothing of guns, but even she must admit that there is something mesmerizing about the way his hands move over them.

Philippe already has several cushions, and he props his revolver against one in his lap, but Christine takes one off the sofa, and hands it to Trev when he sets down the second revolver. “For your ribs,” she says, and his smile is grateful.

He hands her the third revolver. “Every woman out here should know how to handle a gun,” and his words are firm, his fingers guiding her hands to hold it. “It is too much to even consider showing you how to shoot straight, but if you can load them it will be a help now.”

And as the water boils, he shows her how to flick the barrel open, and insert the small bullets, and close it again. He makes her do it several times, and Philippe nods, satisfied.

“As good as Adelia,” and the reference to his sister makes something bloom warm in her chest.

Trev loads the last revolver, and settles it in his lap with his first one. “If there is to be trouble,” he says, “you take cover. Philippe and I will shoot. If he runs out, swap guns with him and re-load. If they get past us,” (and bile rises in her throat to think that _get past us_ is surely a kinder way of saying _if they kill us_ ), “aim at them, and squeeze the trigger with all you’ve got.”

Kill them. He wants her to try to kill someone, if he should fall.

And it sounds like the logical thing, the sensible thing, but she might be called on to kill someone by the end of the day, to save herself, to save these men who are her friends, and anything she might say dies in her chest.

How can she kill someone?

Sorelli has killed a man, she knows that. And Philippe and Erik were in the war, and Aman, so they’ve surely killed people too. Has Trev killed? Has he had to?

She’s not sure she wants to know.

She nods, and makes the coffee. But the gun is close to her hand, and the drink turns to ash on her tongue.

* * *

 

It is like a siege, like something out of Scott, and the tightness in her chest makes it difficult to breathe, makes it impossible to sit. There is no way she can read, not now, though Trev, frail as he is, his cheeks freshly shaven thanks to the mirror she balanced for him, has a book of Tennyson open on his lap. She doesn’t have her sewing things, but she doubts if she could settle to that either.

So she dusts, and sweeps, and beats the curtains to hide the tears that threaten, the longing for Erik to come back, for him to walk in the door and take her in his arms and be all right and promise her that Aman is all right (promise her that she doesn’t have to shoot at anyone) and that he, Erik, her husband, will never leave her sight again, will never leave her arms. But she knows he would never make her an impossible promise, and she knew coming out here the danger, the risk of becoming a young widow (though for all the stories she’s heard she never thought she might have to take the law upon herself, and she doesn’t know what makes her feel more ill, the thought she might have to take a life, or that Erik might lose his), but knowing it and being faced, now, with the possibility, are two different things, and Erik is not here, is out there somewhere, trying to find his dearest friend, and if it was Sorelli wouldn’t she do the same? (She’d shoot to save Sorelli, wouldn’t she?) Even Beth, though she only knows her little more than a month, with her quick smile and her kindness, she would rush to find (could she rush to kill for her?). Beth, who is still ill, according to Max, and she would go to Beth now, would stay with her and take care of her, pretend that all is well and Erik is in his office and she has not received instructions on how to load and shoot a gun (does Beth know how to shoot? Would Beth shoot to save her?), but Erik asked her to stay here and so help her she will not break a promise to her husband, not at a time like this, not when Philippe and Trev are charged with her safety and so certain there will be trouble.

Beth will be all right. She’s with the other dancers. They will take care of her.

(Better that she is away from here, if they are right and there is to be trouble.)

It is Erik who needs her to worry over him, and worry over him she does, and will until she knows he’s safe, until he’s _here_.

How much longer must it be?

The clock ticks infinitesimally slowly. Only an hour and a half has passed since he left their bed, a lone, single hour trying to blend into two, and it feels like too much, feels as if it’s been days. How far might Darius have galloped without his rider?

Is this to be their marriage? Him getting pulled away on business, having to run off to save his friends, and her left to wait, and worry? Is this what her life is to be from now on, precious moments of closeness interspersed among periods of worry and fear? With keeping a gun within arm’s reach in case she needs to protect herself?

She might be able to live with it, might be able to accept it, if she knew he would come home safe.

All she wants is Erik safe.

Aman must have been shot, but no one says it. Must have been shot because he would not simply fall off, and something left blood on the saddle. And the gunshot would have frightened Darius, and the sudden loss of his rider. And if Aman was shot, how bad is it? Is he out there alone, bleeding helpless in the dirt? Is he dying even now? Or already dead and Erik is riding out to find the body of his best friend? Or is it only minor, and Darius threw him with fright, and even now he is walking back to town, about to meet Erik riding out as if hell itself is after him? Maybe his leg is shattered and he can’t move. Or his hip, like Philippe. Or maybe it went somewhere deep inside and he can’t stop the blood and—

She’ll scream. She needs to scream. Needs to cry and rage and let it all out, and she wants to, she wants to but it won’t escape, all of it still trapped inside her, keeping her lungs from filling, tightening her throat as if it is it’s own noose. Aman can’t be dead. He can’t be. It’s wrong. He’s not allowed to be dead, he’s not supposed to be. If he’s dead it will destroy Erik, she saw the way he asked for him when he was ill, the way Aman spoke to him softly and settled him. Aman who told her about Erik being confined to bed with a terrible headache, and told her when he was well enough for her to visit so they could begin to work things out. He has been nothing but kind to her, nothing but gentle, and the way his smile warms his eyes is one of the best sights in the world. Aman can’t just be dead, he can’t be. It’s impossible.

She’s crying, she’s crying and Erik isn’t here for her to bury her head in his chest, is out there maybe in danger, maybe dying too if someone shot at him, maybe weeping over Aman. And Sorelli isn’t here, Sorelli who always knows how to calm her down, how to say the right thing and she misses Sorelli so badly, her voice and her eyes and her smile and her kisses. She didn’t realise until now how much she misses her, as if she is bleeding somewhere deep inside. She needs Sorelli, how she needs her, Sorelli who always understood her, who went through terrible things and had to do terrible things and is still able to smile and laugh and make everything feel as if it will be all right, as if there is nothing wrong in the world and everything is just as it should be. Sorelli should be _here,_ and Erik and Aman. They should all be _here._

An arm wraps around her, pulls her close and there is a voice in her ear, murmuring softly, an arm in a sling, and it takes her a moment to realise that it is Philippe holding her, Philippe, Erik’s other oldest friend who is stroking her hair and telling her, promising her, that Erik will be all right, that he will be back soon, to let the tears out even though there is no need to cry because the tears will help.

_Hell you could marry De Chagny Junior!_

Old words, ringing in her ears, but it is not Raoul holding her, it is Philippe, and she bites her lip and leans into him, and lets her tears soak his shirt.

* * *

 

She’s able to breathe again, and has dried the tears from her face. Philippe helps her search the cupboards for baking things “from when my sister visited in the spring” while Trev keeps watch at the door. She’s making biscuits to keep her hands busy, cutting shapes out of the dough and trying not to think, when Beth rushes in, pausing just long enough in the door so Trev recognises her and doesn’t shoot, then coming to hug Christine.

“Max just told me,” she whispers, “and I said the dancing could hang today.”

Christine is so shocked at seeing Beth here before her that it takes a moment to form words. “I thought you were ill?”

A funny look crosses Beth’s face. “It might have been something I ate. I feel better now.”

There is no apron for Beth to wear but she makes coffee and steadies Christine’s hands when they shake. The biscuits are just done when the door opens, and Max is framed there, calmer than he was earlier, and his expression softens when he sees Beth. “There’s no news,” and Christine’s heart sinks. She didn’t know how much she was expecting him to say something, and she looks down so she doesn’t betray herself, seeing from the side of her eye as Beth and Max hug. He stays only a few minutes before he is gone again, bringing biscuits to take to Raoul.

Trev dozes lightly in his chair, still facing the door, and Philippe keeps watch beside him, revolver balanced on his bad arm. But the door doesn’t budge and Trev wakes, and admonishes Philippe for not waking him sooner.

The clock ticks on. Another hour. Two. She strokes her fingers over the spines of books and cleans the mess from baking and considers making something proper to eat for dinner but reasons none of them have any appetite, and Trev is only allowed light things because of the laudanum he is supposed to be taking. She watches as the sun sinks lower in the sky, and hopes that nightfall holds off, hopes that Erik will be back before dark, and is oddly calm as she settles in a chair and twists her handkerchief, Beth dozing on the sofa. She will be fine. They will all be fine. They have to be. And Erik will come back with Aman, and there will be some perfectly reasonable explanation and all of this worry will have been for nothing, will just have been fanciful foolishness. Aman will laugh at them, and Erik will smile at her, that soft special smile, and take her in his arms and lead her back to his bed, and they will kiss and hold each other close and talk and she’ll tell him how frightened she was, and he’ll say he was never in any danger, not really, it was all a big misunderstanding.

She might almost believe it, maybe. If Trev were not still watching the door so closely.

And barely has she thought it when the door bursts open, and Trev is on his feet, shoulders straight and defiant, book of Tennyson hitting the floor with a thud, two guns trained on the newcomer, but it is Raoul, only Raoul, and Philippe is standing before his brother but Raoul’s eyes slide past him and go to her, and the look there cuts her to the quick.

“He’s back.”


	17. Suffering

As long as she lives (and it will be a good many years yet, though she does not know that here and now) she will never forget the sight that greets her when she runs down the street, Beth and Raoul at her heels. A gathering crowd, the Khanum at the centre, sweat-darkened grey, eyes rolling white, blood running in a stream from her right shoulder. Erik on her back, bare side of his face bone-white, swaying in the saddle, Aman in front of him, held close, head lolling against Erik’s shoulder, so still and pale, his left arm bound to his chest, the sky vermillion and gold. She cries out, heart hammering, almost faints, black marring the edges of her vision, but Beth grabs her arm, and steadies her as the colours came back too vivid, and all she can see is red blood, and Aman’s ashen face, his closed eyes.

Much of what happens after is a blur – Beth running for the doctor, skirt hitched up; Max and Raoul carrying Aman between them, Aman whimpering when Max jars his shoulder; the crowd pressing close; Philippe, gun at his hip, giving instructions to a stable boy, leaning heavy on his cane; Erik sliding out of the saddle, stumbling when he reaches the ground, grabbing for her. She pulls his arm around her shoulders and he grimaces, Trev at his other side, and between them they steady him, Trev’s teeth gritted and sweat beading on his forehead from the effort, and she wants to tell him to stop, wants to tell him she can manage, that he’ll only hurt himself worse, but his jaw is set and the words won’t come, her mouth too dry. She wraps her arm around Erik’s waist to get a better grip on him, but when they take the first step his leg buckles beneath him, and the noise he makes goes straight to her heart, a cross between a cry and a moan.

Trev’s arm wraps around him, brushing hers, and he murmurs something that might be Latin or might be French or might be perfectly normal English that she can’t make out, not when Erik shakes his head and his voice is hoarse on the single word, “Shot.”

Bile rises hot in her throat, and she swallows it down. Later she can give in to the writhing inside, to the terrible thing clawing at her heart. Later she can have all of the time in the world to give into hysteria, to scream and cry. But not now. Erik needs her now, and she presses closer to her, takes his weight heavier on her shoulders, and his eyes are screwed tight but his arm tightens around her.

He might have been shot, but he’s not dead. He hasn’t collapsed. He’s walking with the help of her and Trev. And for now that needs to be good enough.

The crowd clears for them, and the calmness that spreads through her is odd, and oddly distant. It is as if she is not herself, not Christine Lamonte-formerly-Daaé helping her husband home, but someone else, someone with no connection to this. She keeps her mouth shut, and breathes hard through her nose as she walks, just focuses on putting one foot in front of the other, on getting Erik home.

She doesn’t dare look at Trev. What if he’s hurt his ribs worse? Would she see it in his face? She’s not sure she wants to find out.

They are almost home, only a few yards from the gate, when Erik slumps against her, dead weight. She almost falls beneath him, knees buckling, but then some of Erik’s weight comes off her shoulders and she hears Trev’s grunt.

They get him through the gate, up to the door, and then Beth is there, and Beth helps them get him inside.

They deposit him in his armchair, still unconscious, head lolling and mouth slack. She eases his mask off, tries not to think of how pale his face is, as Beth settles his leg on a footstool, and only now Christine can see the blood staining the dark fabric of his trousers, the blood that she might have taken to be Aman’s if it were not for the gaping hole in the fabric revealing his pale skin beneath (if it were not for his whisper of _shot_ ), and more blood streaming from a gash in his thigh, dark and red and too much. She swallows hard against the tears tightening her throat, pulls the cloth away, and Beth hands her a shears from her sewing things.

“I’ll get water,” Beth’s voice is quiet and too loud, and Trev comes back from the cabinet with brandy.

“It will revive him,” and his voice is tight, one hand pressed to the left side of his chest where his damaged ribs are, and Christine knows he must have pulled something he shouldn’t have, must have jarred them or torn stitches, but she can’t worry about him now, not when Erik hasn’t woken and Aman is laid out in the next room, bleeding and still.

The doctor is there then, bustling in so she doesn’t see the moment Trev swallows a mouthful of the brandy himself, grimacing on the burn of it, before dabbing it on Erik’s lips. But she does see it as Erik struggles awake, groaning, tears damp on his lashes, and she bites her lip to keep from whimpering, as she takes his hand and squeezes it.

His gaze is hazy as his eyes meet hers, a frown creasing his brow, and she musters a smile for him, kisses his knuckles.

“It’s going to be all right,” she whispers, just for him to hear. “It’ll be all right.”

It has to be.

* * *

 

The doctor — Armstrong — sees to Erik’s leg first, and part of Christine wants to snap at him, to tell him to see to Aman instead, who’s so much worse off, and who Erik, in a hoarse voice so unlike his own, whispers has been shot in the shoulder. But part of her, some traitorous part of her that can’t bear to see Erik bleed a moment longer, is relieved that it is Erik he concerns himself with. She doesn’t say anything, just fetches water and towels while Beth is dispatched with instructions to Aman’s side, and Trev is ordered to sit on the sofa and not move an inch.

The sharp smell of the solution Armstrong mixes to clean the leg wound leaves her with a faint headache behind her eyes, and when all he needs is within easy reach she sits on the arm of Erik’s chair, and closes her eyes, hand back in his.

He refuses the offered laudanum, and his grip on her is strong enough that she doesn’t feel the pain buzzing in her skull.

He doesn’t make a sound, but there are tears damp on his cheeks, pressed into her dress, and she strokes his hair and whispers to him, any nonsense that doesn’t make sense even to her, just to give him her voice, to give him something to cling to, something to think about that isn’t the pain, that isn’t the knowledge of Aman injured, Aman bleeding, (Aman dying?), and it’s not enough, it’s so far away from being enough, but it’s all she can do and so help her but she’ll do it as well as she can.

A murmur of voices when Armstrong is done, Erik’s hoarse “thank you”, and she opens her eyes to his closed ones, his pale face, and the white bandage bound around his thigh, trousers cut open and the fabric hanging each side like black wings brushing the floor.

The smell of the disinfectant solution must be making her mind ramble.

“How do you feel?” Armstrong’s question as he washes his hands is firm, directed to Trev, but Trev just shakes his head.

“A little sore. I’m fine.” His hand is still pressed to his side, his voice faintly breathless, probably from the pain. “No bleeding.”

“You need rest.”

Trev doesn’t answer, just quirks his lip as if to say, _tell me something you haven’t before_.

She hadn’t noticed Philippe arrive, but he comes out now from Aman’s room, face drawn, and lowers himself onto the sofa beside Trev. The look they exchange is unreadable, before he turns his attention to her, and to Erik.

“The boys are gone out to deal with any questions,” and his voice is low, but Erik nods beside her, fingers still twined with hers.

“Good.”

She leaves Erik’s side long enough to heat more water, and bring it into Aman’s room, and helps Armstrong bring in his things. And it is war within her, again, between whether to stay, and help with what must be done, or to stay at Erik’s side, and try to be some comfort to him. Her heart cries out to go to her husband, her mind to stay with Aman, and in the end it is Beth, laying a hand on her shoulder, who directs her back to the parlour.

“I’ve done this sort of thing before,” and her voice is grim, “and Raoul will be along soon.”

Christine is selfishly relieved, but she will never admit it.

She does not think she could bear to be in there, to see Aman’s pallid face any longer than she has to, the sweat on his forehead, his closed eyes and tight jaw, the bloodied cloths bound tight around his shoulder. To see those rags removed, the damage laid open and bare.

Nursing has never been one of her skills, and to have to see that, to hear his moans of pain as Armstrong investigates the wound, before he etherises him—

No. She is better off not in there.

She squeezes Beth’s hand.

“Thank you.”

* * *

 

The quiet in the parlour is oppressive, so much worse than the waiting of earlier, broken only by Trev’s ragged breathing, Philippe’s low murmurs, her heating of fresh water for Armstrong, each time Raoul comes out from Aman’s room to request it. He doesn’t speak other than that, his only comment, shortly after he came back being, “Max will get me if he wants me.”

Erik doesn’t speak, doesn’t touch his brandy, just stares into nothing, and every time a noise comes from the room that might be from Aman himself, he shivers, and leans closer to her, and she might sing for him so he doesn’t have to hear, doesn’t have to think, but it is unseemly to sing at a time like this, unseemly to play the piano at a time like this, so she just squeezes his hand and presses herself closer to him, and hopes that her being here can be some help to him.

She makes coffee, but Philippe is the only one to touch it. Trev just shakes his head, looking faintly ill, and coughs low in his throat, grimacing.

There is a check of concern in her heart, but she pushes it aside. He said he was fine, and when Philippe frowns at him, he shakes his head.

Erik’s voice is cracked when, sometime after midnight, he whispers, “They’ll pay for it. I swear to God they’ll pay. It was Woods and Johnston. I know it was.” Johnston, the one who won the bronc riding, who Beth said is hard on the other girls, and Woods the Democrat, Woods Erik’s closest rival. But she cannot dwell on the names, on the implication of them, not with that whispered, _they’ll pay_. Erik’s words are as steady as if he is merely commenting on the weather, or on what they might have for dinner, but it dawns on her that he is talking about killing, and she shivers. _They’ll pay_ , and that dark undercurrent in his tone. He does not merely mean jailing them, does he?

For the second time in twelve hours she is faced with the possibility of killing, and her stomach churns. But that’s how things are done out here, isn’t it? Shooting, killing. She’s always known that but to be confronted with it now—

Sorelli killed a man to save her own life. Tom in Leadville was murdered over poker. Someone shot at Erik, did shoot Aman, attacked Trev and left him for dead, and it might the first time she’s been shown how to load a gun, but it’s not the first time she’s had to think about killing.

If Erik kills those men who tried to kill him, tried to kill Aman, and Trev, then it’s only right, isn’t it?

“No.” It is Philippe who answers, jolts her from her thoughts, and she hears again what Erik said, _they’ll pay_. Her eyes go to Philippe, leaning forward on the sofa, his face set and eyes burning. “No. If you go looking for them it will be murder and you will hang.” The intensity in his face is sharp and frightening. “You need proof. You have to wait. They’ll slip up sometime, and then you can move.”

“And let them take another shot at Aman? Or try for you next time? They already tried to kill Trev.” At Erik’s mention of his name, Trev looks to them from where he’s been gazing towards the window, his mouth twisted in a grimace, and shakes his head. “They already tried to kill me three times counting the race! I’m not going to just sit back and let them get away with it. What if they get lucky next time? What if it’s Raoul next?”

It is the first time she has ever heard Erik call Raoul by name, and not simply De Chagny Junior, and something flickers in Philippe’s face before it vanishes again, and his voice is as hard as ever. “If you go for them now, then what happened in Tombstone will happen here. It’ll turn into a shooting war. They’ll pick us off one by one.”

She remembers, vaguely, what happened in Tombstone. She was still getting back on her feet after her father’s death, and Sorelli followed it religiously in the papers, the reports, the discussion, the inquest drama, the shootings of the two Earps. The reprisals. If that could come here—

Her blood runs cold.

If _Erik_ is the one whose name is splashed across all the papers, all those horrible things said about him as fact, the world calling him a murderer for trying to protect them, for trying to protect _her_ too, all of that said and written and read and believed by people who have never met him, who would not understand, who would make fun of him for his _face_ —

“Philippe is right.” Her voice catches her off guard, and Erik gapes at her even as Philippe sinks back onto the sofa, clearly satisfied. Beside him Trev coughs, and gasps, presses a hand to his lips. “They’ll tear you apart. Tear you all apart. And what then?” _What about me?_ She wants to ask, but it’s selfish to think about herself, selfish to put that on top of Erik now but the question burns in the back of her mind.

_What will happen to me if you get killed?_

Erik closes his eyes and sinks back into his chair as Trev coughs again, and she knows he’s thinking it too, knows she’s won.

“All right,” he whispers.

She squeezes his fingers tight as relief rushes through her, that he will not be going anywhere yet, but the relief is short-lived.

Trev gasps, and retches, the colour drains from Philippe’s face, and when Trev chokes again the hand that comes away from his mouth is bloodied red.

“I don’t…feel very well,” he gasps, and coughs, fresh blood dribbling from his lips, eyes rolling. Philippe cries, “Roddy!” and catches him as he falls.

* * *

 

Armstrong is summoned from Aman’s side, and he and Raoul between them carry Trev to Erik’s bed, prop him with pillows under his good side to keep it higher so he doesn’t drown in his own blood. Trev half-rouses, coughing, as the bandages are cut away, revealing a mass of deep purple bruising along his left side. The pronouncement is grave — bleeding, in his lung and the space outside it, from damaged ribs that cracked and punctured as he helped carry Erik, a murmur of lesions and adhesions and contusions. Armstrong gives him morphine with a hypodermic to ease the pain (and she looks away as the needle punctures the soft pale skin of Trev’s inner arm), a second hypodermic of codeine for the cough, and Raoul is dispatched to the hotel for ice, to lay on Trev’s chest and freeze the bleeding vessels inside.

“There are more radical methods,” and Armstrong’s voice is low outside the room, where neither Trev nor Philippe can hear him, “but they lead to recurrences, and the outcome is not always favourable.”

She might not be a doctor, but she has no need to ask what he means.

They wait for Raoul’s return, and Armstrong finishes attending to Aman. Christine almost envies him his unconsciousness, his blissful ignorance of Trev in the room next door. But Aman is so terribly ill himself, and when she sees him at last, as Armstrong tidies his instruments away, he is impossibly frail beneath blankets and bandages.

“I’ve done all I can for him for now,” and the man’s voice is hushed. “The bullet tore through his shoulder. I can’t stitch it, or I risk stitching in infection, and he’s lost a lot of blood. He needs quiet, but I wish I could say something better than that.”

And then Raoul is back with bags of ice, breathless as he thrusts them into Armstrong’s hands. “I can get more,” he says, but the doctor shakes his head.

“Not yet. In a couple of hours, when this has almost melted.”

With Raoul’s help, Christine pulls Erik to his feet, and they watch as Armstrong lays the ice on Trev’s chest, but Trev’s eyelids barely flicker, the drugs having pulled him into unconsciousness, and Philippe’s eyes are rimmed red in the dim gaslight.

Erik leans heavy on her, and closes his eyes.

“I should’ve been faster,” he whispers, and a tear rolls down his cheek.


	18. Culmination

She has never been in Aman’s room before this, before delivering water and towels in for the doctor, and she had no time to look then. But now, after settling Erik in a chair by the bed, and lowering the lamp light, she has time to look around her, though it makes her feel uneasy, as if she might be intruding (better to intrude, maybe, than to look at Aman, at how grey his face is, and the slow rise and fall of his chest, the ether lingering in his lungs, morphine in his blood). The room is just as neat as she might have expected, everything in its place, and a small collection of books and letters on the nightstand. A crack in the heavy drapes shows a flicker of stars in the sky, the hint of a faint lightening in the distance. Morning is never far away, at this time of year. Another hazy day, and something about the promise of it fills her with dread.

She should close the drapes, so the light, when it comes, will not disturb Aman.

It is unbearable seeing him like this, unbearable seeing him, and unbearable seeing Trev in the room next door, so very still, blood staining his lips. Doctor Armstrong is gone, to get some rest, but he promised to come back in a few hours, left them strict instructions to send for him immediately if Trev starts coughing again, or gasping, if Aman’s shoulder starts bleeding afresh, if Erik’s stitches start weeping. He has given her a bottle of morphine, if either of them wakes, shown her how to measure it out, how to find a vein and pierce it with the needle, to push the drug in.

Erik looked away, an odd expression crossing his face, and whispered, when Armstrong, was gone, “best if I not touch it.”

It would be better, if she couldn’t suspect what he means.

Raoul sat with Trev a little while, as if he might be a silent comfort to Philippe, but then, haggard as he is, decided it might be best if he go down to the office, to Max. “I won’t be able sleep anyway,” he whispered, and grasped her hand. “Call me if anything…” the words died, and he blinked against the dampness in his eyes.

Erik has barely spoken a word.

She is not sure whether she is more good here with him and Aman, or with Philippe and Trev, or if she is no good anywhere, and is better off in the parlour, with Beth, ready if something goes wrong.

(Beth is hovering outside Erik’s room where Trev lies, not wanting to intrude, not wanting Philippe to be alone if Trev dies.)

It doesn’t do to dwell on such possibilities.

She swallows and turns her attention back to Aman. His shoulder is hidden beneath bandages and dressings, his arm bound tight to his chest to keep him from moving it even if he does wake, and the white cotton of the bindings makes him look even more ill, even more ashen, his hand oddly dark resting on top of that white.

As she watches, a tear trickles down Erik’s cheek, and he brushes that still hand with his long pale fingers.

“He’s never been shot before,” and his voice is so low as he bows his head that she knows the words are not meant for her ears.

She looks away again, looking for something, anything, to focus on that isn’t what has happened, that isn’t what might happen, and her eyes fall on a letter on top of the bundle on the bedside locker. The writing is oddly familiar, swirly and elegant and her heart catches in her chest. There is only one person who writes like that, only one person whose writing she knows better than her own, and she’s in New Orleans, as far away from here as she can be.

Sorelli.

Sorelli has been writing to Aman. Aman is the mysterious man Sorelli has written her of. She wondered, suspected even, but—Sorelli and Aman.

_Tell his good-looking friend to write me if he wants a wife._

Tears prickle her eyes and she looks away, to the crack in the drapes. She should close them. The gaslight is illuminating things best left silent, any more light will be cruelty, and she drifts towards the windows, fingers the soft velvet. It’s Erik she would have expected to have velvet drapes, even Philippe, not Aman, and a laugh bubbles up inside of her, a hysterical giggle that she clamps down on because if she starts laughing she might never be able to stop and if she starts laughing she’ll start weeping and Erik will have to pick her up off the floor and the exertion will burst the stitches in his leg, but Aman has velvet drapes and he is the man who is writing Sorelli, the man Sorelli confessed in her last letter she is thinking of marrying, but Sorelli is thinking of marrying him and he’s dying or very well might be and she deserves to know, doesn’t she? Deserves to know that the man she might marry has been shot, shot, has lost so much blood and that blood is staining Erik’s shirt and his sleeves and his hands because he shook his head and bit his lip when she suggested he might wash them, and that was before Trev collapsed, before Trev’s blood was added to her sleeves and to Erik’s, and he’s dying too, or might be, or might be closer to it than Aman is and there’s nothing she or anyone else can do and Erik is only a shadow of himself but there’s nothing she can do to help him either but if the shot had been better placed he might be stretched out here too dying or already dead.

The tears come, burning hot, trickling down her cheeks and there’s nothing she can do to stop them so she snaps the gap in the drapes closed, turns back to Erik who is resting his head against Aman’s arm, and goes to him, goes to this man who is her husband and who she loves, she loves, and isn’t that a strange thought? She loves him and she can’t say it, the words clog in her throat and refuse to see light but it’s true, she loves him, and he could have died out there if that bullet had struck true and she never said it, never told him, and she can’t tell him, not now, not yet, not when it’s so new to her and he’s sitting with his best friend who’s almost died.

Her thoughts are getting away on her. Sorelli would tell her to breathe, would grasp her hands and look her in the eye and count the seconds, one, two, three, in, two, three, four, out, and repeat, in…

Erik needs her. Erik, her husband, who she loves, and she swallows, and wipes the tears from her face, and goes to him.

He lifts his head to look at her, and his eyes are shining gold, red-rimmed, tears running down his cheeks equally, the good and the bad, and she reaches for him and pulls him into her arms, lays his head against her chest and holds him, just holds him, as she starts to breathe again.

(Next door, Trev’s eyes flicker open to a hazy world, to Philippe’s pale face, a hand light on his forehead, and he can’t talk, can’t ask anything of him, the pain in his chest is too tight, too heavy, too little air, but his fingers stir and Philippe nods, and slowly eases his bad arm from the sling, lays it down beside him. Trev curls his fingers with those limp ones that were once so strong, and tears prickle his eyes, but Philippe’s lips are soft against his forehead as the world dims, and the murmured “Roddy” catches his heart, and there is nothing more that needs to be said than that, the whole world is caught up in it, and he breathes, and sighs, and the morphine pulls him under.)

* * *

 

Morning has broken, the world outside filled with watery pale light, when, at last, she manages to persuade Erik to leave Aman’s side, to get some rest. Aman has only drifted towards wakefulness a handful of times, eyes blank and dazed looking past Erik, asking for him and not recognising him, and it is torture for Erik being there, being so helpless, and she can see that but still he refused to leave, until Beth looked in, and whispered that she’d made a thin soup if either of them has an appetite for it (they don’t), and that Philippe has fallen asleep beside Trev.

If Philippe can sleep at a time like this…

She peeks in while Erik is steadying himself, and Philippe’s head is on the pillow beside Trev’s, a blanket around his shoulders, fresh ice on Trev’s chest. Neither of them stir as she lowers the lamplight, Trev’s breaths hoarse and whistling, and she leaves them be.

She takes Erik to her own bed, and it is for the best that his own is taken with Trev, because hers is bigger, and softer, and will be easier on his aching bones. They make halting progress out of Aman’s room, and through the parlour, pain etched in the lines of his face, and as he leans against the wall she closes the door of her room. The only light is what filters through her curtains, bathing the room softly blue as she lies him down, still wearing his blood-stained clothes, and lies down beside him, carefully, slowly, so as not to disturb him more than necessary.

“Don’t go,” he whispers, eyes closed, and she has no intention of leaving his side, not now, but she raises his hand to her lips, and kisses it gently.

“I’m not going anywhere.” She eases herself closer to him, as slowly as she can to avoid jarring his leg, and still his face contorts with pain but there is nothing she can do to help, nothing, only wrap her arms around him and draw him close. Fresh tears trickle from his eyes, whether from pain or strain or sheer worry she cannot tell and it doesn’t matter, not when all that matters is that this is Erik and he’s crying, and the tears will dry on his face and leave it cracked and sore.

“It’s my fault,” he whispers, and she kisses him.

“None of this is your fault,” she murmurs, as low as she can, so her words can sink into him. “No one blames you. It’s the fault of whoever did this.” _Woods. Johnston._ If he is right. “You can’t blame yourself.” She almost calls him _my love_ but the words stop in her mouth, and instead she kisses him again. Kisses his closed eyes, kisses his cheeks, kisses each single tear and its track, kisses his cracked and damaged cheek and his whole one and kisses a tear that catches at the corner of his lips, and the ones that cross the bridge of his nose, and kisses and kisses and kisses him, until her lips are tingling and numb and his tears have stopped coming, and each kiss is an affirmation, a resolution, an assurance that he carries no blame, and she loves him even if she cannot say it, and she kisses him until his breathing evens into sleep. She presses herself closer, and strokes his hair, and finally, satisfied that he is truly at peace, she closes her eyes, and sighs.

* * *

 

She sleeps, she must, because the next she knows is rapping on the door, Erik groaning and shifting in her arms. She sits up as he blinks his eyes open, and the door swings to reveal Raoul, white as a sheet. For one heart-stopping terrible moment she fears the worst, fears Trev has died while they slept, that Aman has taken a turn for the worst, and Erik’s eyes are wide, his breaths coming short.

“Johnston has called you out.” The spell breaks, and Christine gasps in a breath, blood rushing in her ears. “In front of the clock tower in fifteen minutes, or he’s coming.”

_He’s coming_. And it dawns on her what Raoul means. Johnston wants to meet Erik in the street. Johnston wants to _shoot_ him. Johnston must be the one who tried to shoot him yesterday! Who shot Aman! Who attacked Trev! And bile burns hot in her throat. He’s tried to kill Erik before and now he wants to try again, when Erik is injured and worn to the bone, when he has the upper hand.

Erik is silent beside her, terribly silent, but he nods, slowly, and she knows he understands too, probably understood even before she did. He doesn’t speak, just slips from the bed, wincing as he puts weight on his injured leg. He fixes his shirt, and his belt, and his fingers are nimble buckling on his gunbelt, but she can’t admire them now, not when, in fifteen minutes, those fingers might be lying still forever.

She rolls out of bed beside him, and stands on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “I don’t want you to go,” she whispers, even knowing it’s futile, knowing he’ll go for the same reason he rode out to save Aman, for the same reason Philippe had to stop him looking for the shooter. He’ll go, and this might be the last time she’ll see him, the last time she’ll feel his skin under her lips, and it’s not enough, it’s never going to be enough, and tears fill her eyes, but he’s got to know dammit, he’s got to know.

The door clicks as it closes, Raoul leaving them in privacy.

“I’ve got to.” Erik is hoarse, so hoarse, with the exhaustion and pain, and she’d put him back to bed, make him stay there if she could, if it was any way possible. “You understand, right? It’s my job.”

She doesn’t want to understand. She doesn’t want to have to understand. Just once she wants to be selfish, wants to keep him beside her and safe, and after this he can belong to the town again, but not now, not this time. This time she says no. Other women can keep their husbands. Why can’t she? Who decreed she has to give him up? “I don’t want to.”

His lips twist, eyes shining, and softly his thumb brushes the tears from her cheek. “He’ll come for me here. Aman and Trev will both be in trouble. And you—I don’t want you to have to see that. This is the only way to finish it.” His voice wavers but it’s steady to the end, and her throat is so tight she can hardly breathe. She’s lost. She knows it. Knew it before she even started, and she bites her lip to keep the tears from coming heavier.

“Be careful.”

He smiles, just slightly, just a glimmer of that crooked smile she loves. “I always am.”

And then he is leaving, is hobbling past her, and she follows him, follows him because she can’t bear to let him out of her sight, not yet, not a moment before she has to.

Max is waiting in the parlour, his hat in his hand, not looking at Beth, whose hand is to her mouth as she stands in the doorway to Aman’s room, and Philippe is leaning against the wall, haggard and pale, no one with Aman, no one with Trev, not in the face of this, and Erik doesn’t look at her, but Raoul glances at her, just for a moment, before his gaze goes back to Erik.

“If there’s any chance,” and his voice is soft as he stands there, gaze flicking between her and Erik once more, “of there being a child, I don’t think you should go.”

Her heart lurches, and she might have stumbled if the wall were not there for her to catch herself on. A child. A child! How could he even—but of course he must assume, would not know they have kept to separate beds until recently and that their kisses have been little more than chaste, and fresh tears well again in her eyes but of course there’s no chance of a child, none at all, and is that for better, or for worse?

“There’s none.” And Erik’s voice is equally as soft now.

Raoul nods, and Max straightens up beside him. “We can say you’re too ill to leave bed, and be ready for him if he comes here.”

But Erik shakes his head. “I don’t want him anywhere near here, not now.”

“We’ll follow behind you,” and at Raoul’s words Philippe goes, if possible, even paler. “Keep you from getting back shot.”

Something flickers in Erik’s face. “Raoul—”

“No.” And Raoul holds his head high, looking terribly like Philippe, his eyes blazing. “I promised you, that night, that you would have my gun if you ever needed it. You need it now.”

A long moment, as if he is suffering with an internal struggle, and Erik’s nod, when it comes, is slow. “You did.”

And Raoul’s gaze is defiant. “Then it’s settled.”

Philippe steps forward, and his gaze is as defiant as Raoul’s, his features even harder, and Christine’s heart lurches to see him this way, so different from the Philippe she knows, his eyes cold as ice. “I’m going with you.”

For the first time, she sees the badge shining silver, pinned to his chest.

Trev’s badge.

Her stomach clenches.

How can he go? How can he hold a gun when he needs his good hand for his cane? Christine aches to pull him back almost as much as she longs to keep Erik safe, to keep them both here where she can watch them, but Erik meets Philippe’s gaze, and shakes his head.

“I need you here if they come.”

A look passes between the two of them, stretching on, some silent argument and understanding, until eventually, eventually Philippe nods.

“All right.”

The bubble of relief in her heart is tiny.

Beth’s arms come around her, and she leans into her embrace, feeling as if it’s the only thing keeping her on her feet, and then Philippe holds his cane out to Erik, nodding at his leg.

“I’ll want it back.”

Erik nods as he takes it. “I’ll keep it in mind.” A beat, and then. “If either of them wake, don’t tell them where I am.”

And then, without a kiss, without even a backwards glance at her, leaning heavy on the borrowed cane, he hobbles out the door, Max and Raoul following him. And she tries not to think of the next time she might see her husband, tries not to see him stretched bleeding in the dust, tries not to see him laid out in a coffin, eyes closed and hands folded over his chest, chalky pale like Tom in Leadville, best suit hiding the fatal wound, but it’s all she can see, all she can see, and Beth is holding her, leading her to the sofa, Philippe lowering himself down beside her, pistol in his lap, good hand clasping hers, and she gasps against the pain that pierces her chest, wills the tears to remain at bay. She will not cry now. She will not cry when Erik needs her to be strong, even in his absence. She will not be the one to go to pieces, not when Beth’s man is out there too, and Philippe’s brother. She will not—

A shot echoes in the air, and a scream strangles itself in her throat. A second shot, and she’s clinging to Beth, Beth clinging to her, and a third shot that makes her close her eyes so she never sees the moment Philippe bows his head, fingers worrying his sling, biting his lip so hard it bleeds, and when the fourth shot rings she tastes blood in her mouth and she can’t tell if it’s her tongue or her lip or her teeth clenched so tight.

The silence echoes loud.


	19. Noon

He knows it, feels it deep in his chest, that he is not ready for this. True, he has always been fast with a gun, but he has not had to test himself in a long time. He has not had to fire in anything less than the peak of health in longer. It is foolish of him to rely on experience nineteen years gone, to trust that his hands are fast enough, have not slowed with age and time and his own foolishness (they are, they are, they must be). But the pain throbs deep in his leg, threatening to buckle, threatening to send him to the ground. The bullet missed both the bone and the artery and for that he is grateful but it was close, too close, and it tore through deep enough that each step sends spasms up into his hip, down his thigh, makes his knee prickle and grind and there is no way he could run, if he had to, no way he could ride, not again, not if all went to all.

If it were not for Philippe’s cane he would never manage the walk.

He told Christine it was his job to come out, to meet Johnston at his words. But it is so much more than his job. It is his duty, his duty to her, his duty to Aman and to Trev both, who are each so gravely ill because of him, who would each come out here to defend him without a second thought. He has called them reckless, has called Trev foolish (he shouldn’t have been so hard on the boy, he knows that, and if he could take it back now he would but he never expected it would come to this, how has it come to this?) but still they would come without question, would lay down their lives if he asked them too.

(They might very well do that, even without his having asked.)

If he is not to fight, what else can he do, except run? And if he runs, it will just make it that much easier for the next person to come for him, to finish him, assuming he can get away, assuming Johnston doesn’t target Christine next, or one of the others. Those options are each completely out of the question. There is nothing else for him to do than this.

He can feel Raoul and Max behind him, one at each shoulder, ready to grab for him if he stumbles and he wants to tell them to go, to be safe, this has nothing to do with them. But the chains of honour, of loyalty and pride that have him going out to meet Johnston are the same ones that have them behind him, ready to fight if they must, the same ones that would have Aman and Trev flanking him if they were well enough, that led Philippe to try to insist on coming with him. He will not have Philippe’s death on his conscience, not when he is so close to having two others as well.

Raoul promised him his gun, blood on his face and his hands, his eyes burning the night Philippe was shot, this _boy_ who is not even old enough to vote and was younger then, and swore to stand by him for the sake of a brother old enough to be his father, proud and fierce and defiant. And Max, he’s never questioned Max, and Max is good to Christine, laughs with Aman and stood by Philippe and he would place his life in Max’s hands without question, would ask him to guard his soul.

His heart pounds in his chest. His throat is dry.

_What happened in Tombstone will happen here. It’ll turn into a shooting war._

Did the Earps feel like this as they walked out? Holliday, who fixed his teeth once in Dodge, what feels a world away from here? Or were they calm, collected? Did they know what they were getting into? Their women ran into the street afterwards, to see if they were alive. They said the Harony woman had blood and glass in her hair. And Christine—Christine would run to him. He could see it in her face as he parted from her. She would run to him, and take him in her arms like she did when he half-fell off the Khanum. Would feel him for blood, for bullet holes, steady him on his feet. Would kneel beside him in the dust and ruin her dress and put pressure on his wounds even as he choked and gasped and tried to cling to her and he can only hope Beth and Philippe can hold her back, can keep her from following him, keep her from seeing him die.

If he dies, there will be no need for Woods to go after her. If he dies, she will be safe. If he dies, Philippe will be safe, and Raoul and Max if they do not attempt heroics, and Trev and Aman will be spared second attempts on their lives that are so tenuous already.

If he dies…

He just has to be slower. To be slower and they will be safe.

Max murmurs, “I’ll creep to the clock tower” and his presence is gone. But Raoul is still there, and even now he could tell Raoul to go, could ask him. There is still time.

He catches sight of those fine-cut features, those blue eyes so like his brother’s and it is like looking at Philippe during the war, Philippe ready to face his own death (Philippe ready to join him now, haggard and bloody, never mind that he could never manage a gun and a cane at once), and knows it would be futile.

Affection bursts within him for the young man, so much a boy, that he never thought much of, who he always feared would get himself killed, who he tried to convince, even only six weeks ago, to give up his badge and go to law school instead. But the defiance in that face makes his heart swell.

If there is anyone he can be proud of, it is this boy.

They are almost there. He draws a shaky breath, reaches for the badge on his chest and unpins it. He won’t need it anymore, and he turns to Raoul, and presses it into his hand, the way Philippe once pressed it into his.

“Keep it,” he whispers, and Raoul opens his mouth for to protest, but he shakes his head. “I couldn’t stand it if you argued.”

And Raoul nods, his expression grave, as he tucks the badge into his breast pocket, behind the one he himself wears.

“I’ll take good care of it.”

Erik nods, and turns back to the clock tower. The big hand is just caressing the twelve, high at the centre, ready to brush it.

Johnston is before them now, tall and dark and proud, eyes burning in his pale face, so much like he himself was, so long ago. Perhaps it is fitting, that this is how it should end. People like him were never meant to grow old. And he could never make anything stick to Johnston, but perhaps when he goes down, if Raoul is fast enough…

Raoul has got to be fast enough. He’s got to be.

The world slows down, sound fading and there is only the throbbing of his heart in his chest, still beating after all these years, still beating even though they told his mother he would never survive babyhood, not with his face, not with his lungs though they behaved themselves better with age, and sometimes it seemed too strong, his heart, too reliable, but if it had never beat so strong he would not have met Christine, and what a terrible loss that would have been.

Christine. She’ll cry for him. And that’s the one thing he regrets. He should never have dragged her into this. He should never have tried to be clever.

His fingers twitch, and the gun is in his hand, and there is a crack that feels very far away and something brushes his arm and Johnston doubles over, falls, and another crack, a whistle, and his leg buckles at last beneath him, the cane falling from his grip, and the ground is so close, so close, his knees aching as he hits it but he doesn’t topple and there’s another crack and Raoul’s face is before him, Raoul’s face, and why hasn’t he collapsed? Why isn’t he already stretched out? Why is he still breathing? Surely the bullet went somewhere deep inside, near the centre of his life, it must have, Johnston is a crack shot, but Raoul is gripping his shoulders, and there are voices, shouting, someone running, and he gasps—

\--he gasps and the pain crashes into him, an explosion in his leg, his arm burning and he looks, sees the blood running dark in a stream down his hand, branching between his fingers, and the arm is shattered it must be shattered like Philippe’s, shattered and useless and they’ll take it off him take it to save the infection and take his leg too and he’ll bleed to death instead, bleed to death like the men he pulled off the battlefield, like the other lieutenant who Philippe was cradling and kissing as he stopped breathing and they pretended not to understand, and Christine will be there, Christine will see him suffer, and he has to spare her that, he has to.

Words, far away, so far away. Raoul’s voice, Raoul’s hands, pulling him, raising him. “It’s over, Erik, it’s over, you’re going to be all right it’s over come on get up you have to get up…” He’s not all right he’s supposed to be dead. Why isn’t he dead? Can’t Raoul see there’s been a terrible mistake? He’s not all right and it’s not over because there’s more there’s gonna be more there’s always more they’re worse than bugs they keep coming and coming and coming but there’s ringing in his ears and his mouth won’t work and he’s helpless to say anything, to do anything, only to lean into Raoul, Raoul’s arm around his waist, and his leg buckles beneath him the moment he puts weight on it but Raoul catches him, Raoul keeps him up, keeps him from falling.

They’re walking, walking and leading and stumbling, but everything feels oddly far away, as if he’s about to fall apart, become a jumble of disembodied limbs in a pile, one misstep and he’ll shatter, but Raoul’s voice is a low hum in his ear, urging him on, and then Max is there, Max, slipping an arm around him, steadying him and he lets his eyes flutter closed no need to keep them open, no need…

His cheek stings and his eyes flutter open, flutter open to Raoul’s face, pale as death, Raoul shaking him. “Stay awake, Erik. You have to stay awake, we’re almost there.” But the words don’t match up, don’t make sense, almost where?

They are before a house, before a door that is familiar, and there is a flash of blonde hair, blonde curls, and Christine is here, Christine, his Christine, his beautiful Christine throwing herself into his arms, and there are tears in his eyes and he’s shaking, shaking and crying and she’s kissing him, kissing him and holding him and crying too and he can’t speak but her voice is shaking enough for the both of them.

“I thought I’d lost you, I thought…”

A bright parlour, a piano, his piano where Christine sits with him at the bench as he plays. And Aman hasn’t woken, she says, face raw with tears, Aman is still silent beneath the covers and bandages, and Trev hasn’t stirred at all, and Philippe’s face is ash-pale, splotched with tears and he hugs him and kisses his forehead, and they are lowering him onto the sofa and Christine is hugging him again, and he leans his head against her chest, hears her heart thudding inside, the heart he would have died to keep beating, the heart he would have broken. And he brushes her hand with the tips of his fingers, her delicate wrist, and looks up at her into her blue eyes shining with tears, like bluebonnets after the rain, and the words feel so normal, feel so right on his tongue though they’ve popped into his head and he can’t tell from where, but they’re true, they’re true, and he should have said them before now, before it’s come to all this.

“I love you.” His voice is rough to his own ears, distorted as if through water, and her lips twist and she’s kissing his tears away, the ones that trickle down his good cheek and the bad.

“I love you too,” and her lips brush his, so soft, so gentle, tasting of salty tears but his or hers he cannot tell, and her hand at the back of his neck cradles him close, and he holds her as tight as he dares with his good arm, and closes his eyes. “I love you,” she whispers, “I love you,” voice thick with tears, shed and unshed, and his arm is burning with pain, but he holds her as close as he dares, and she kisses his hair, and this is it, this is it, it’s over, it’s done.

It’s done.


	20. November

It was only when Raoul turned twenty-one in August that it dawned on Christine (helped by a comment from Aman) that upon her own birthday in September she would be eligible to vote. When the day came, she, Sorelli, and Raoul went together to register, and it was a heady feeling thinking that, in just under two months, she would be able to vote for her husband, to help him in a more tangible way than simply being married to him.

Erik very nearly backed out of the race, in those weeks after he faced down Johnston, when he was finally well enough to think about it. The bullet that tore through his leg and arm left ragged trails of damage, brought in dust and debris. In the hours after the gunfight there was surgery to take the bullets out and stem the bleeding. Days later, his skin flushed and temperature soaring, pulse thready and rapid beneath her fingers, there was more surgery to cut the infection out of both wounds, and now Christine shudders to remember those days and nights of sitting at his side, of dabbing the sweat from his forehead and stroking his hair and murmuring to him softly when he woke fretful and upset, their love such a new thing, at such risk of being snatched away, and his hand clinging to hers was the dearest thing in the world. She would bathe his head and neck with cool water, and sing to him when he woke, and hold him close as he slept, careful not to jostle his wounded arm. It upset him if he woke to find her gone.

It was only afterwards, when the fever had broken, and Armstrong declared an improvement in the condition of his wounds, that she allowed herself to cry. She leaned into Philippe, and he rocked her gently, but he was crying too, with relief and exhaustion, from caring for Trev, and the fear that was sharp in them that all they could do for him might not be enough.

Erik was still sleeping off the effects of the ether that first day, face slack and pale, his whole form diminished beneath blankets and bandages, when Trev’s condition worsened. His lips were blue, every breath a shallow gasp, sweat beading on his face, unaware even though his eyes were half-open, head tilted back with the effort to breathe, insensible even as he moaned in pain if anything touched his chest. Surgery was declared his only chance, ether a risk in his condition so chloroform was used instead, and the chloroform left him feverish and ill.

She sat with Philippe, neither of them able to speak, neither of them wanting to be alone to wait and wonder, helpless to do anything, each knowing the other was the one who would understand best.

Between a fresh episode of bleeding, and the pneumonia that followed, it was weeks before Trev was out of danger, and by then Erik was hobbling about with a cane, his arm in a sling (Philippe, in one of the rare moments where he could crack a joke, commented that they matched each other, but Erik’s impediments were only temporary, compared to his lasting damage), under strict instructions not to strain himself, miserable and in pain and refusing to take laudanum, even though it was the only thing that would help him sleep, the only thing that would touch the terrible guilt inside of him.

Not even Aman, who came back to himself the fastest of the three, who avoided infections and complications though the heavy blood loss took a toll that left him lightheaded and confined to bed, could convince Erik of his own innocence.

It was Aman who gave her Erik’s badge, come to him from Raoul, and as he pressed it into her hand, with a thin, weak smile, she knew that there could never really be another option, except for Erik to wear it again, and to carry on.

He could never have faith in himself otherwise, if he didn’t.

She gave it to him on a quiet evening, Aman dozing propped with pillows in his bed, a book open on his lap, Trev sleeping more peacefully than at any time in weeks. She found Erik, standing in the garden, leaning heavy on his cane, looking up at the sky that had deepened from purple to dark blue, the first stars twinkling down at them from the heavens.

He turned to her, exhausted and worn, and she stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, and pinned the badge to his chest.

Tears welled in his eyes as he shook his head, and she brushed them away with her thumb, her throat tight.

“I can’t,” he whispered, and she shook her head.

“You can. For your own sake. No one blames you.” The truth of it was heavy on both of them, and she knew he was thinking of Trev, and how upset he’d gotten, with barely the breath to speak, when he heard Erik was thinking of backing out. “If you don’t, it would be the same as letting them win.”

By then the story was out, the truth of what had happened, and what had caused it all. Philippe wore Trev’s badge and ignored Armstrong’s insistence that he needed rest or else risk collapse (it had been three days, and Philippe had barely slept or eaten at all, his face haggard and grey, eyes bloodshot), and that Johnston was not well enough to be questioned, after Erik’s bullet struck him high in the chest. But Philippe was afraid that Johnston would die and there would never be answers, never be reasons, so he pressed on, and learned what he needed.

It was a set-up. Johnston, always Walter Woods’ right-hand man, had decided to play both sides, and secretly aligned himself with Rogerson the independent, who had once saved his life, to make it look as if Woods was sabotaging the election by targeting Erik and his men. Erik had made trouble for him in the past, and he wanted him dead. The man in the clocktower, who Raoul killed with a dead shot when his bullet struck Erik in the leg and he gave himself away, was Buquet, a terrible pianist, easily recruited because Erik had once made things difficult for him too, and Rogerson himself was caught by Max, sneaking into the tower. Everything came out at Buquet’s inquest, that she could not attend because Erik was desperately ill, but Philippe made sure it was in all of the papers, a matter of public record.

It was the only thing that made him feel slightly less helpless, even as Trev still lingered, caught between life and death.

Woods decided to stay in the race, despite his reputation in tatters, hoping that Erik might still back out and give him a clear field, but once Erik, too, resolved himself to continue on, his campaign was helped by the ranchers, who decided, all of them to a man, Democrats and Republicans both, to come out to support him.

Woods doesn’t stand a chance.

There were whispers, of course, over what had happened to Erik’s face. He went out there bare to the world for the first time, and though there were only a handful of witnesses, they swore to what they saw, and their description went around the saloons and gambling halls. It was Raoul, as acting marshal in Erik’s place, who made it known that anyone spouting anything about Erik’s face would be pulled up for slander and fined, and face three nights in the cells. The threat was enough to kill the gossip, with how he stood at Erik’s side, and how he shot Buquet, though the whispers remain in the shadows.

On this crisp November morning, she and Erik walk arm-in-arm to the polling station. The damage to his leg has healed, though it aches in the cold weather, and the new scars on his arm are hidden under his sleeve. She traces them in the night, kisses them, and sometimes those burning days of July seem so very far away, and sometimes it feels as if it is only moments since Raoul and Max carried him home between them, so much blood she thought the bullets had gone deep inside.

(She has had nightmares, though they are becoming less frequent, of Erik stretched in the dust, of Erik bleeding to death beneath her hands, of Raoul and Max carrying him in already dead, of him with a shattered arm and bleeding stump of a leg, of him choking on his own blood, and she wakes in the night in his arms, just to watch him breathe, to trace her fingers over his disfigurement and card through his hair, and lay her hand over his heart, and kiss him, lightly, as he sleeps. Wakes just to feel him alive and well beside her.)

It was three weeks after everything happened when Sorelli arrived, summoned by a telegram from Beth, who decided that with so much fear, and anxiety, that Christine needed her oldest friend. The first Christine knew of it was Sorelli’s appearance at her door. Her head spun with the shock, and when she came back to herself she was on the sofa, Sorelli hugging her, and Erik sitting in his armchair, the faintest trace of a smile tugging at his lips.

“You’ve been having the wrong kinds of excitement out here without me,” Sorelli said, her forehead creased with concern, and she kissed Christine for old time’s sake, and kissed Erik too, and as he stared after her in shock, Christine cracked up in a fit of giggles.

The first thing, she learned afterwards, that Sorelli said to Aman, was that she was staying whether he liked it or not. The second was a proposal of marriage. He grinned up at her from his pillows, pale and frail and weak, and said that he rather liked it a lot, and they have never been far from each other’s sides since.

Trev’s primary complaint, when he was well enough to be up to date on news and able to complain, was that he missed the excitement of Sorelli’s arrival. He hit it off with her the moment he met her, and they trade stories of their debauched days in Dodge and elsewhere, and have found a couple of men in their backgrounds that they share. She has done wonderful things for his spirits, in his long convalescence.

The truth of it is that he will never fully recover from the damage to his lungs. He will always be prone to losing his breath with minor exertions, or if he talks too long, always be more likely to develop pneumonia, and for that pneumonia to be dangerous. He resigned his badge as soon as he was able to learn the details of his illness, and to make such a decision, and has decided to start a library.

(She was outside the door, and heard snatches of the words he and Erik shared. “I can’t…do that again…to Philippe.” Full sentences were still beyond him but he did his best, and Erik’s voice when it came was a hush. “I understand. And I don’t blame you. Not for anything.” “I know.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “But if you…ever need…a man to back you…” “I’ll never doubt you a moment.”)

Sorelli and Aman married at the end of October, with a wedding that was truly a celebration, for Erik’s recovery, for Aman rebuilding his strength, and for Trev up and about in a limited way. Erik and Philippe were groomsmen (and there were tears in Erik’s eyes that she teased him about afterwards until he kissed her into silence), while she and Beth were the bridesmaids, in green and blue respectively, and Sorelli in a pale pink that set off her complexion.

There is a photo that she loves, of all them together. Even there, Erik is proud, standing tall beside Aman, and Philippe is beside him, straight-backed and defiant, his cane sitting against the chair that holds Trev, gaunt from his ordeal, and too frail to stand for long, but grinning for the camera. Raoul, beside Philippe, looks ready to catch him should he stumble, but still his smile lights up his face. And beside Aman who looks as if he could never be happier, is Sorelli who looks more beautiful than ever, then it is her, and Beth, the flowers she carries hiding the faint bump of her stomach, and Max’s arm is linked through hers, and he looks as if he knows all of the secrets of the world.

They, too, are to be married in a week. The baby is due in March, and it was Max’s insistence that it be born to married parents. It was only in September, when things had finally settled, that Beth revealed she is expecting, and it explained her recurring illness of the summer. Max resigned his own badge once Erik was back at work, and put himself on the ballot for the role of assessor. From what Christine has heard, his chances are good.

It is all local offices up for election, because as a territory Wyoming has no say in national offices, and Christine will confess she is a little relieved. It’s overwhelming enough, voting for the local positions with people she knows, and a thrill runs through her to mark her ballot for Erik.

To think, she can vote for her husband!

It feels surreal. As if she is dreaming and might wake in her old room in New Orleans with Sorelli sprawled in bed beside her. But she is not in New Orleans, she is here, with a husband she loves and who loves her and they play music together and talk about books and kiss (and, a small handful of times, they have done more than simply kiss, and she has learned his scars and their stories and how they feel beneath her lips, and he has learned that love-making is nothing to be afraid of), and he has given her friends who have become family; Aman and Trev and Raoul and Max who are brothers to her, and Philippe who is even dearer, who pats her hand and tells her in his own quiet way not to worry, and that he understands. He and Raoul will soon be departing to visit their sister in Texas, and though she has never met Adelia, not in person, they have struck up a correspondence, and she is looking forward to the spring, when Adelia will visit and Beth will have her baby that she, Christine, has already been named godmother to. It was suggested that Erik be named godfather, and Max wanted him very much to accept, but Erik, when it was put to him, thought the honour was too much, and suggested Raoul instead.

Raoul has been elevated to his right-hand man, and has taken charge of the new deputies, provisionally hired, pending the results of the election.

It is a far cry from a year ago, a far cry from even six months ago when she had barely accepted Erik’s offer and was full of a thousand fears. But it is where she has found herself, and it is a thousand times better than she imagined, and she and Erik leave the polling station arm-in-arm, and kiss at the first opportunity, and she suspects Erik is going to win by a landslide, whatever his anxieties. There will be a party for him, when he is sworn in again, a new portrait taken that will make him look stately and wise, and she will wear a new dress and tease him that she might have to sell Ayesha’s little foal Shalott to cover a new wardrobe, and they will dance and kiss and hold each other, and it will be better than her best dreams, better than her wildest and best imaginings, and she is going to enjoy every moment of having him in her arms.

She will look back on this summer, on the difficulty and how she almost lost him, and it will make her love him even more, will make every moment they spend together infinitely more precious. And though the memories will always be ones she prefers not to dwell on, it is a part of the story of who they are, and it took what happened to bring them together, to teach them of how they feel, the things they were not ready to admit until circumstance made them ready. The fear of what might have been will always live somewhere deep in her heart, but she will be thankful, every day, for the way it all worked out, for their friends, and especially for him.

He will smile that soft smile he keeps just for her, and kiss her and hold her close, and though he might not always be able to find the words, she will never doubt how he feels.

And they will be happy, and together, and in love, always, for as long as they both shall live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: And so it is done. The last chapter of what I intend to be my last fic (though, to be fair, it probably won't be long until I turn up with a one-shot or three). Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed all along. If you've enjoyed this fic, please do feel free to hit me up on Tumblr (as littlelonghairedoutlaw) with questions or comments or just to say hello!
> 
> This fic owes its existence to a great many things -- Chris LeDoux and his existence and his songs; the music of Brenn Hill, Western Underground, Ned LeDoux, Hozier, Mumford & Sons, Florence + the Machine, Loreena McKennitt, The Cranberries; James Drury in the 1960s; The Virginian (Owen Wister), Doc and Epitaph (both Mary Doria Russell), Doc Holliday's Woman (Jane Candia Coleman), The Sackett Novels (Louis L'Amour), Streets of Laredo and the other three Lonesome Dove novels (Larry McMurtry); an old fascination with injuries and ailments of the chest; Wynonna Earp; Tombstone (1993), High Noon (1952), The Plainsman (1936); thirty seconds on 26 October 1881; the memory of one Anglo-Irish second lieutenant killed at Neuve Chapelle in March 1915; a week of intensive shed cleaning in January; rjdaae for sending me the prompt that turned into this fic; a whole host of other fics and songs and assorted bovines and odd musings on varied and sundry topics; last but not least, it owes itself to all of you for supporting it and me all along.
> 
> Please do leave one last review. If you would like to read more westerns from me, then please do check out Running Through the Rain (Pharoga), the Delta stories -- Meet You at the Delta, Run into the Sea, When It Feels Like Nothing Else Matters, Dust to Dust -- (Erik/Christine/Daroga; also Erik/Christine, Pharoga, and Christine/Daroga in different ways and at different times), and Digging Up Bones, a quasi-western about palaeontology and TB and the Old West (Raoul/OMC). All of these can be found by searching my profile. RTtR has a whole host of follow-up fics but I won't mention them here.
> 
> This is the first western of mine that does not feature a consumptive. It is very strange.
> 
> Thank you for sticking with me and this fic for so long!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Blue Eyes and Freckles](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21108539) by [ponderinfrustration](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderinfrustration/pseuds/ponderinfrustration)




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